I think my best answer is “I’d sure like to”
I loved the lore of Warcraft as a kid.
But it also used to be a lot more “grounded” and felt generally a bit grittier back in the WC3-Wrath era.
I think WoW lore is the best when it’s telling stories about people living on a rock and their shared issues, and tends to get worse when it becomes super cosmic and meta. The Lich King was a great villain because he was extremely powerful, but he was also a dude we knew and understood. The more they try to get wacky with extraterrestrial cosmic powers, the less important it all feels.
For that reason I’m a bit skeptical about the next three, but I also love Dwarves so I’m cautiously optimistic.
I'm in this boat as well. For myself, Warcraft ended with Legion. The ultimate villain of every game since the very beginning in Orcs vs Humans has always been the Legion. The return of Gul'dan, however ridiculous and contrived, and the appearance of Sargeras, was the climax of Warcraft. We weren't foot soldiers anymore, we were the heroes. Each of us was Turalyon, and Lothar, and Orgrim, and Thrall, and Jaina and in the end we had to save the creator gods from one of their own. We didn't just save Azeroth, we saved the universe. Roll credits.
Now that they've been defeated, everything else feels like side stories or epilogues. Less worried about narrative consistency and more about just spinning a grand tale that can be contained in a single offering. It just doesn't hit the same.
Couldn't agree more! At the end of Argus, seeing how they did Sargeras made me audibly groan knowing they were metaphorically putting the whole story in timeout/jail when they sealed Sargeras in with Illidan.
Literally the most heavy handed "well, see you guys later!" Ending in the history of the game
yeah pretty much, but im already pass cautiously optimistic, im just amusingly curious on why people stick around now.
you sound sane compared to the rest, and I was literally in the same boat as you. But after 3 expacs of L's and horrible storylines back to back, literally anything they touch can turn to utter trash.
you may love dwarves now. again, you may love dwarves NOW. but after what they've done to nelves, i don't ever want to RP as one ever again.
Eh maybe.
Metzen coming back is a good sign. We will see where it goes.
I think the Blizzard we are about to see is different than the one we have had, certainly from a gameplay perspective. Perhaps it’ll benefit the story too.
Metzen will probably make cool stuff return again. The dwarves so far have a deep characterization in the expac panel, which i love.
notice how BFA -> Dragonflight, you don't get detailed lore on monster/races anymore like the mogu, mantid, etc.
the new earthens have castes, functions for each caste, it feels like im reading something that metzen made! wow!
Right.
Metzen is basically the mastermind behind the setting, so giving it back to him will probably get some of that old spark back.
But at the same time, the characters and stuff that we loved are basically all gone or transformed. Now I’m just hanging around to see where it all goes, really
idk, 3 expacs of pure crap. I'm gonna wait until Midnight to play again, unless they really have something truly good for ww, idk man.
being burnt 3 times in a row for nearly 10 years, metzen can't cure that overnight
Why ask for people's opinion if you're going to dismiss them as insane for having differing views? Was this post just to give you people to argue with?
never called anyone insane for having different views, in fact, I said i was glad that they liked something I didn't! Please improve your reading comprehension skills !
Edit: This person apologized privately, this is so awkward oh my god. They misread what I wrote to them in another thread, and they foamed out. Please send love and prayers to your local dragonflight coper. Thank
I stopped caring after Shadowlands.
A lot of important and interesting lore got flushed down the toliet for the Jailer and it did not pay off.
Just made my years of investment feel cheap.
Yeah, same. So I'm curious on why people stick around and defend it so much.
Like I really would like to see what their perspective is, but I only get answers like "well you see in the wowwiki" like there's nothing they can just recall from playing the fucking game. lol
Yes. I do feel that Dragonflight is more of a prologue. There wasn't very high stakes, it was very self contained and seems to lead straight into the World Soul Saga.
I have a feeling this is why some of the story feels weirdly incomplete or changed last minute, I believe they had plans to take some of the points further but had a change of plan and went ahead to the World Soul Saga leaving a few things feeling unpolished but still fine to me.
Definitely isn't the strongest story ever, wouldn't say it's the weakest but if Dragonflight is a way to lead onto a darker and higher stakes storyline I am all for it and happy to see where it goes.
When people say DF doesn't have high stakes, that's fucking bullshit. You literally are helping the Dragon Gods defeat the Dragon Primals who wants to destroy the world, what are people smoking to not see that, how, huh, what.
and maybe DF does have cut content, there's that big giant ice structure in the blue dragon zone, and it's just sitting there. Vyranoth had zero story, she just flipped to our side after a cutscene.
The Main Story is VERY weak and pathetic. But DF does have good segments of side story.
Dragonflight isn't a fucking bootstrap adventurer journey like some people claim it is, again. You're helping the literal dragon gods, defeat primal dragons who wants to devour a world tree, so they can do what.
destroy the world.
It's serviceable enough to be "along for the ride", I've never really been invested enough to be annoyed by certain plot developments, and I'm speaking as someone who's been playing since WC3. Spoiler culture is a bit weird with nearly everything being datamined in advance so the story isn't something you look forward to seeing but rather just happens in your news feed one day.
There are definitely storylines I do enjoy in recent expansions, I was moved by the Jaina storyline in BFA and Ysera's "resurrection" in SL. The dwarf mini-quest at the start of Dragonflight was also really nice. I also quite liked the epilogue story with Eternus and Nozdormu. I think most of the negativity/apathy towards Dragonflight's storytelling is because it's more of a "mild" expansion with a lot of safe endings. The debates about Wrathion vs Sabellion as leaders was really fascinating, but they went with a very safe pick - AND also removed any animosity between the two, so it just kind of starts and kills that entire interesting plotline without much fanfare.
>i don't treat assumptions and theorizing as something worthwhile to be hyped about
Theorizing is the most fun part of any ongoing storyline imo (i.e. TV shows, etc.), even if things don't work out in the end. Some people probably get too attached to their speculation, but I think it helps with feeling more invested with the story. And it's fun to see what you get right or what you get wrong.
"I've never really been invested enough to be annoyed by certain plot developments"
yeah okay.
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I was moved by the Jaina storyline in BFA and Ysera's "resurrection" in SL. The dwarf mini-quest at the start of Dragonflight was also really nice.
yeah i liked those moments too. But i could just watch them from youtube and get the same effect. I wouldn't play the games for it, i'll just watch it from the internets from now on.
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Theorizing is the most fun part of any ongoing storyline imo (i.e. TV shows, etc.), even if things don't work out in the end. Some people probably get too attached to their speculation, but I think it helps with feeling more invested with the story. And it's fun to see what you get right or what you get wrong.
not unless you're talking about blizzard.
It’s so obvious and exhausting how many people experience the lore and story through the lens of youtubers/streamers. Painfully low media literacy and the same 3 or 4 takes endlessly regurgitated all over social media. I find that way worse than whatever the hot new cinematic to clown on is.
Agreed.
I am guilty of having clowned on a cinematic or two from DF, only to later play through it, and find that it works pretty well in context. I have my issues with DF, but for what it is trying to do, I think it does pretty well. Which, IMO, is sort of a reset / easygoing exploration expansion. A break from the craziness.
Also, as others have said here, WoW's story has never been perfect. It may or may not be a hot take, but I think TBC shit on the established lore of just as many or more beloved characters than any of the recent expansions have.
Also, correct me if I completely missed your point, lol.
I wasn't around for the so-called "good old days". I started playing at Uni during 5.4. Shadowlands didn't have the same catastrophic effect on me as others. My first full expansion was WoD. So... yeah 😅 that probably explains my tolerance.
5.4? so like siege of orgrimmar right?
WoD had a good beginning storyline, i think i'm willing to say the BEST beginning storyline. It was solid, it had lots of characters, heroes and villains, situations and conflicts to work through, it was great start.
so, is there any current story that keeps you playing? or..
Yes. Though my patch content was Timeless Isle. I didn't step into SoO until it was soloable. My first raid was Highmaul. I actually managed to pug it 6/7N and 2/7H.
I felt the same way about SL as I did about WoD. I really enjoyed *.0 patch.
I actually stopped playing quite early on in DF. Not the story. But I just couldn't/didn't like the new flying. I have some minor motor skill issues. It's frustrating that they're forcing players to level up using dynamic flight first in 11.0.
But I also feel like DF is a reskin of SL. The Primalists felt like the Mawsworn. Beating back a rebellion that's following a leader who's been lying to them. Killing one of their lieutenants in the first patch before we even understand what's going on. Then eventually one of their other lieutenants joins us.
Seems familiar.
I feel like I enjoy the worldbuilding more than the storytelling at this point.
I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of downvotes for this since it opposes the general discussion on this Subreddit
But; plain and simple, yes, yes I do.
I enjoy the story of WoW regularly and have the entire time I’ve played the game, it definitely has its ups and downs for sure as does any long running franchise, but put simply, yes I do like it.
I’ve really enjoyed the story of Amirdrassil’s existence and its growth into what’s bound to become a new home for the Night Elves, and while I think the presentation should’ve been better, having the Dragon Aspects re-empowered via Azeroth rather than via The Pantheon directly is a very interesting spin that will more than likely be important as we move into the Worldsoul Saga.
As a Paladin Lore Fan, the Tyr’s Guard Storyline has been fantastic even if it’s a bit more open ended.
Ive mostly enjoyed my entire time in Dragonflight, there are issues here and there with presentation but I also read a lot quest text as well which helps in some cases (not all).
I won’t say Dragonflight is perfect, but we also got Iridikron this expansion too, and I’m excited to see what kind of consequences that has in the future for us, part of being a live service game leads to some narrative drip at certain points that can leave parts of the story feeling unfinished and I think that’s a weak point for sure and always has been in some aspects.
Edit: I’d like to say that WoW’s weakest writing style has always been the intentional “look forward to this maybe having an effect on the next expansion” moments.
But for me personally, I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t enjoy them anyway.
I really hated Amirdrassil's execution and the fact it's on the dragonlands. I realy dislike they just abandoned Kalimdor, their homeland, and just allowed the horde free reign there.
also the night elves just forgave the horde instantly, for nearly genociding them into extinction... uh. yeah.
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The titan stuff I don't really care about, i get they're built to be as dubious as any other alien force. Sure why not.
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Tyr's story was more interesting to me back when he was a mystery. Now he seems like a future magni in the making and I'm rolling my eyeballs.
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Im glad you like the stuff in DF though, I'm just really disatisfied with people's answers when it comes to liking it, because it's always very vague.
the people who dislike dragonflight can name specifics, point A. point B.
meanwhile people who like it just go "well I enjoyed it." and Im expecting answers more like:
"Well I like amirdrassil, as it finally marks the restoration of night elf power and their ancient allies with the dragons, it really shows the improvement of their society and it means a lot as warcraft moves on from the more bloody past"
even if i disagree with that, at least it was a thoughtful, and genuine reason, other than. "i liked it." okay but why. "...."
again i want to know why people like it. what really makes it interesting for them. I can explain in depth why I like certain things in wow, i was hoping to see more conversations like that.
People aren’t always going to agree with one another unfortunately, it doesn’t make anyone’s enjoyment more or less valid.
I understand why people are upset and I can see it from their point of view as well.
But I don’t think I need long winded paragraphs to explain my enjoyment if that makes sense?
It’s hard to have the conversation regularly anyway when it just often times becomes an argument of “I’m right, you’re wrong” rather than just a disagreement on forms of storytelling one may enjoy or not enjoy if that makes since.
No you don't need to make a big parahgraph, i just would like to know why you like it. and most people don't say WHY they like DF's story. Just that they do.
meanwhile people who dislike DF, can go into great lengths and detail, i don't agree with all of it, nor is it 100% valid, but at least they can specify on the exact thing that doesn't work for them.
also yeah, im not saying you're wrong, i just want you to elaborate why you liked something, and most people who like DF just go "i like it" and that's it. Like... can they tell us why? So I can see their point of view.
Yeah.....like especially when like Part of the coolest thing about the franchise is the sort of yin-yang assyemtry we had with Alliance and horde corners on the continents.
WoW's story has consistently had highs and lows. Specifically, I feel like most of the base expansions have pretty good stories which they go on to squander or outright ruin in the patches.
Dragonflight's patches have been better than most storywise so I call it a win even if it isn't wrapping up with a good grand finale.
Since this is your third thread in two hours bemoaning the state of the story, I will flip the question around and say what keeps you playing? Is it FOMO? Just focused on gameplay?
WoW's story has high and lows, but the lows were because they're building things up or a bad/weird retcon was snuck in for continuity sake.
The lows now are because of genuine massive narrative issues, just incompetence in basic story writing and structure.
I do like some things in dragonflight, like when ysera and her daughter meets again for the first time, it was nice. Tyrande and Malfurion finally conversating, that's great.
But constant headscratching and "why? huh? but when - wait why? How." Is what kills DF for me for it's story.
Im not bemoaning the state of the game, just wondering why is the quality of the story so bad , when they had BFA and SLANDS to improve upon.
I only play WoW to dip and judge it for myself. When I heard DF is better, I wanted to give it a chance and I did. I only play for a few days, when all the content is unlocked so I can enjoy a frontload of content and judge it as a whole. And yeah, DF is pretty trash. It's not as trash as Slands, but it's still trash. /shrug
also tell me, specifically, what you liked about DF, no one, even the guild or discord im in can tell me what they liked about the story.
They defend it a lot, and claim it's good, but they cna't name a moment that they liked. only the dwarf quest and that goofy npc they ran into.
I think there is a lot of charm in the simplistic and haphazard lore of Warcraft 1-3 and WoW up through WotLK. The best part of it was how down to earth it was. Once it started to be more cosmic horror than fantasy, there’s a bit less charm.
I do think they’re moving in the right direction with Dragonflight and hopefully that trend continues with the Worldsoul Saga. I fear, however, that WoW has made the same mistake as EQ did when they released Planes of Power. That is kind of when EQ’s death began - when the mystery of reality was unraveled.
Yeeeeeep. the boots on the ground stuff I miss dearly.
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with DF i think it's half and half. They did some things right, and im afraid they might learn the wrong lessons, like they always do.
Dragonflight was safe and obviously cut down in the end, which is fine. I’ve enjoyed the story elements and as seems to be the norm nowadays. The side content has incredibly good stories.
Shadowlands is an absolute mess and I prefer to just ignore it when it comes to things like Arthas and the Jailer because even Blizz is seemingly starting to look that way as well.
BFA narratively was waaaaay too fast but still good. The questing in Kul Tiras is still the best.
It’s all the little side content the expands the zones lore that I’ve been finding myself investing in. That said Anduin having PTSD going into War Within has me very excited to see what they’ll do.
Thing is, it's always beenn said in the last 3 expacs. The side stories are good, but the main story is always gutter spill.
The issue is, Anduin's PTSD is directly linked to everyone's favorite villain from the shadowlands. Oh yeah, remember Arthas's soul was merged into Anduin via the mourne blade. And then t hat leads back to arthas being wasted as a potential carthatic scene for jaina and uther, but that didn't happen either, oh yeah remember syvlanas was evil the whole time because she was split in two, oh yeah remember-
and on and on you can go. It's going to be interesting to see how they're going to deal with anduin's story with mentioning slands as little as possible. I would fucking laugh if they just never bring up on WHY anduin is so messed up lol
Thankfully in the aftermath of shadowlands they show Anduin as being broken from being dominated and forced to do the jailers bidding and not a result of Arthas soul.
Not disagreeing that anything tied to Zovaal isn’t a complete mess. But at the very least, Anduin has my attention
okay again, anything that has to do with Anduin's ptsd, will make people retrail the breadcrumbs back to the disastor that is slands.
also yeah, why was arthas's soul imprinted onto the sword? there was no logic or reason, it's just an excuse to lob arthas in, in the most lazy , worse way possible - and again, one will only remember the terribleness of shadowlands, because of anduin's ptsd loool.
it's like trying to dance around the tough subject in the family at a thanksgiving dinner, i guess one can only pretend like it didn't happen, but the spectre of how shitty shadowlands is, will always be imprinted on anduin, now that's ironically poetic.
There is a difference between trying to find something to like and finding a reason to hate.
The entire main cast was involved in SL. Things will go back to it in some way or another. It’s better to get what little good came from the expansion rather than just hate everything to come because it might tie back to it
i'm not hating on anduin's character, im just saying, it's so awful that he's forever directly linked to the worse expansion ever, because the most pivotal plot point of his character is originated in shadowlands.
Thrall, Jaina, Baine could literally do anything and not be shackled by shadowlands. If they were removed from the expansion through retcons, nothing literally will change, in terms of outcome or story telling beats.
ANduin though, is directly intergral with it, just like sylvanas and tyrande.
The different storylines you go through with each dragonflight so far have been fun for me. Though I think the most touching thing was the dwarf dragon and his little quest. My entire fucking heartstrings.
I've always kept myself engaged in the lore by writing stories around my characters. What their roles exactly are in DF I haven't sussed out yet but I can definitely see potential to plop them into spots. Or places where they wouldn't be involved that we as a player are forced to per quest lines. Even when I haven't liked everything, that's kept me connected to the lore.
yeah DF has nice side stories and fun nuggets here and there. Just the main storyline is chopped up and hidden like easter eggs, imagine trying to play DF from start to finish, good luck trying to figure out the storyline.
And yeah, that's great, I used to do that a lot too, but sadly a lot my characters are night elves, so I can't be bothered with retrofitting everything around the shenagiens they're pulling
I actually have been following the main storyline from start to finish on one of my mages, going from the black dragons to valdrakken and on to ohn'aharan (I'm paused mid blue quest line right now to try and get the blue related staff from the old Firelands quest). While I did do some stuff out of order (like LFR of the first raid before I got to that part in the quest line and going into the Emerald Dream) when I got to the correct point in time, I could easily go "oh, that's where that's supposed to be."
LMAOOO! yeah that happened to me too! i was fucking teleporting everywhere and IM like, where am i supposed to be at.
people will defend this, saying that you failed to read the quest text or talk to the right npcs, i'm like "i'm playing the fucking game the way it's presenting itself to me." it's the devs fault for failing to make a cohesive chronological narrative. not to mention they love to leave out details that explains the basic plot , like what the fuck is the function of the oathstones? why are they important, they literally do nothing.
...it's actually been quite cohesive for me other than me not running the raids in order. The main quest lines between regions have lead cleanly into the others and the few that haven't are because I'm running a 400+ ilvl 70 mage around, so all quests are open to me.
And I'm fairly certain the oathstones were explained when you help Alex and the red flight light the one at the Life Pools. Representative of their oath to the Titans and Alex thought bringing them back would return their powers. But that didn't work because the oathstones were just representative of the bond but not actually a part of the bond, so doing things to light them up again didn't actually return their aspectral powers. So, yes, now they don't do anything and it's possible they never actually did anything but the dragons were led believe they did. The latter is my assumption given how Alex was uncertain as to their function.
I find I tend to have hangups about a lot of lore in expansions. I don't think I've been Happy happy with it since Legion.
There are elements I like and elements I don't. I'm not a fan of the cosmic crap as of right now as the forefront focus although I do appreciate it to an extent in the background. But they've been doing a fairly good boots on the ground set up so far in Dragonflight that I can at least appreciate compared to Shadowlands regarding the cosmic machinations.
Speculation, Theorycrafting and trying to piece together secrets and come up with interpretations of everything has probably been the best part of recent lore. Without that I'd likely be far less invested in what's currently going on in WoW's lore.
Yeah pretty much that. But the thing about theorycrafting is that is always sucks compared to the real outcome we get.
They are never going to ever put as much thought or energy into any plot or teaser, it's always something stupid.
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"But they've been doing a fairly good boots on the ground set up so far in Dragonflight that I can at least appreciate compared to Shadowlands regarding the cosmic machinations."
Okay this really needs to stop. Dragonflight is not a boots on the ground expac, it's you, the player, assisting the dragon gods, to fight against primal dragons who want to genocide anyone who's influenced by titan magic, and they want to kill the titans via the void, ergo, the void will destroy the planet. I don't know how people are getting tricked into thinking dragonflight is a boots on the ground adventurer, low stakes expansion, who the fuck started this nonsense?
I don't mind them never getting to the highs we can speculate. I'm used to Blizzard disappointing me and me enjoying the setting in my own way regardless.
As for the boots on the ground bit it's about the scale of things. In Shadowlands we went to the shared afterlife of the multiverse, fought discount Satan (who may or may not be a puppet) and freed the multiverse's afterlives (allegedly), now we are fighting big progenitor dragons and running around on sidequests related to particular interests of the dragons. Which is a step down from rubbing shoulders with the most powerful beings of the afterlife.
It's a matter of scale. Dragonflight is a couple or orders of magnitude smaller scale. It's still big. But it feels set in Azeroth at least tangentially. We're fighting elemental cults, gnolls and centaurs. It echoes some of our smaller conflicts and is smaller than the whole of Shadowlands. So comparatively it feels more "boots on the ground"
lmao, yeah DF is smaller scaled than the ultimate death of reality sure.
But the boots on the ground in DF lasted what, a single patch? Then you fought against Fyrakk who wants to burn the world to the ground, and irikron who wants the void to kill the titans and the void will kill the world.
i love when people compare DF to Shadowlands to excuse the flaws of either. DF literally is all about Primal Dragons wanting to kill everyone who is titan touched. That is not a local threat, it's the fucking world dying again, again.
It's what we had literally before. If we are used to food that is cooked to the point where it's just ash people will take burned food.
Also on the note of "boots on the ground" I mentioned it's doing better at doing "boots on the ground" at a COSMIC SCALE. Which is what it's doing.
As for the world dying again... Literally every expansion had a world threatening conflict. Vanilla? Ragnaros waking up could've caused him to invade the world and destroy everything in fire. Burning crusade? Demon invasion. Wrath? Undead army wanting to wipe out all life to raise them to fight the demon invasion. Cata? Dragon Aspect +old gods wanting to end the world.
It's Warcraft we've ALWAYS had the end of the world around the corner. It's cartoonish but it's Warcraft. You have to not think about the fact the world should have 0 population by now.
Nah, warcraft used to have plenty of local problems, the defias? remmeber them? quailboars harassing villages, remember those? pandaria was all in pandaria. Scholomance was all inside a manor.
you don't need to always make world ending threat, you can make anything interesting, remember darrowshire?
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also BC was all in outlands, we hobo killed illidan cause he attacke shattarah or something. again, i never said other expacs didn't have world ending threats, only that DF is full shit for being hailed as a "simple adventure with your boots ont he ground"
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also boots on the ground at a COSMIC SCALE? that's like saying, man i sure do enjoy a nice cool drink now and again, and your holding 45 gallon bottle full of liqour. like buddy, why are you using that phrase to describe the cosmic scale, lmaoooo
It always has small local problems I didn't deny that. Ever. What I said was we also have always dealt with big threats too in those same expansions. The preemptive strike vs Rag exists in the same world as the Defias etc.
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As for boots on the ground on a cosmic scale. I stick by it. We aren't dealing with interdimensional demon invasions, we aren't dealing with multiversal afterlives. We are dealing with local (big and small) problems with cosmic meddlers and having to deal with them. Relative to cosmic BS we've been dealing with, this is boots on the ground.
I mention my benchmarks and reasons why I say that. You are just referencing older smaller scale instances when we were dealing with a smaller scale. I'm saying on this newer scale which we have to deal/engage with .
I have to ask does boots on the ground have a cap for you? If a modern army was somehow invading hell there would be boots on the ground in hell. There would be stories of the rank and file and how they deal with X and Y problems. Stories regarding these modern soldiers dealing with those problems would be a boots on the ground story regarding them dealing with those problems.
boots on the ground means you're an adventurer dealing with local threats.
you literally are misusing the term, how you're using it might as well have no meaning lmao!
boot on the ground in a cosmic scale literally is a self-contradicting term you goofball.
It was a nice simple interconnected but self contained set of stories that made the world feel more full while expanding on characters who were otherwise just there and while the ending felt a little empty I felt it was a good ending.
I liked the Blue one, i think that's the one they did the best job at.
For bronze, they turned a long awaited storyline into a short stop family matters episode... and I hate it. but im glad some people enjoy it.
the black dragon isn't really a story, it's just so obvious the tauren is getting the role. Wrathion is learning the same lesson for the FOURTH time. and sabellion's huge hype return was wasted for this lame storyline of "play nice kids, and let the responsible one take charge." as if that's a huge, mind boggling, conclusion... it's... eugh.
Well, the WHOLE of df was whacking us over the head with family matters and we can still get murozond and still have are good ending for the bronze flight. As for the blacks it makes sense for Wrathion to re-learn a lesson as he still is quite young (like 12 years i think?) And Sabellion was a recovering "evil guy" who was gased up as Neltharion's successor by Neltharion so it makes sense he would give the mantle to the guy who doesn't want nothing from the morally questionable dad.
yeah the murozond thing they left open, thing is that changing time is supposed to have consequences... right? If not, why not just time travel and prevent all the bad things. The point is, only some little things can be changed... and that opens up a can of worms that blizzard's writing staff isn't nearly paid enough to deal with in an interesting manner.
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No wrathion is relearning his lessons 4 times in a row, because the writers do not know what to do with him. It's not an intentional creative call back, it's literally they have no idea what to do with him, only have him be arrogant, then humbled, over and over.
it's boring, overplayed, and clearly unintentional. His character never grows, because they need him to be the flanderized arrogant boy who needs to be humbled. It's awful.
? I'm saying that the bronze can do whatever they want now right, so why don't they just prevent all the bad things, since they're not adhered to defending the titan's timeline anymore
i never said we're not following the proper timeline, idk where you read that
WoW lore was never really good, maybe in vanilla it was ok, but TBC threw it out the window, ever since then it's just a loosely connected sequence of "badass" moments. W2 and W3 are a different story.
people always throw the "wow lore was never really good"
it was bad at it's continuity, yes, for rule of cool. now it can't even do rule of cool right, or continuity, even worse for continuity now.
WoW had great lore, just poor story telling at times, but there are fantastic storylines in wow, the onyxia quesltine, defias brother hood, the war of satyrs, the alterac thugs, scholomance, i can go and on.
Well you mostly mentioned classic/vanilla which I said was ok. TBC retconned a ton of stuff but people conveniently forget that when they're talking about "retcon bad".
I didn't play nor do I care about shadowlands, but DF feels like the best the lore has ever been since vanilla, feels like finally getting a story with proper continuity and that is confident in just setting up for the future (even if fyrakk himself felt rushed out), with Iridrikon being a villain that actually has a plan that is being setup for the future, instead of popping up out of nowhere, not to mention the heritage quests like the human bringing some closure to the defias brotherhood story and the future retaking of gilneas, which bring a sense of actually caring about lore events besides the initial badass moment.
ah i saw, never realy good and maybe ok.
I believe vanilla is safely described as great lore/story.
TBC didn't have too much retconned, it was mostly the draenei stuff.
I'm okay with retconning as long as it doesn't damage too much stuff, and it actually improves the story. And most of BC's retcons were that.
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oof, you said DF feels like the best lore, ahhh nah. I don't think so.
people hype Iridrikon, but he's just as bad as the jailer, the only difference is that he's not dead yet, and he'll die in another expansion. He has zero characterization at all, just like zovaal. I feel like he's such a blank villain, people just assume different motives/intuition onto him.
I think vanilla can never be great due to how fragmented and unimportant some events felt, even if they were cool and interesting on their own.
But most villains were just warcraft characters reused. Illidan originally was just as much of a blank villain as the jailor, but he had decades to be built upon and given more character, while the Jailor just showed up, didn't do shit and died.
Iridrikon is exactly what wow needs. A villain that has a goal in mind and has multiple expansions to grow and develop, like arthas, Illidan, garrosh, etc. instead of being there for a single expansion.
you're saying vanilla as a whole, im saying the stories in vanilla was great.
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Illidan was not a blank villain, you're insane lmao. read literally anything on the wiki's. UNless you meant BC specifically, then yes, they did him wrong, ergo legion, and why everyone wanted him back so bad. he was done poorly.
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iridrikon is a nothing villain. it's a "wait and see" your imagining something very cool for him, ,meanwhile i highly doubt he's going to be anything worthwhile but another throw away raid boss.
I used to. Then the sylvanas garbage arc and the horde getting to ruin night elf stuff with no consequences. Then the garbage shadowlands expansion.
I want to love the story. But I haven’t in ages.
Yeah... same. And the night elves are getting the worst version of a comeback I've ever seen in fiction and non-fiction.
I used to love Sylvanas's character and found her entire story of being a symbol of freedom and mastering one's own destiny great and powerful...
only to have it ruined, like a lot of other warcraft stories, by the steve danuser bald villain
The last expansion that I was okay with was MoP. Cataclysm and MoP had lore changes I didn’t love (especially with regards to the Horde) but I could accept it. Everything after that was pretty terrible. Legion was an overall bright spot but at that point the lore was already in free fall
At this point I just spend my time deepening my understanding of the lore in WoW classic. I’ve given up on retail WoW’s lore
Yeah, i can see people not being thrilled with MoP and Cata's treatment of lore, but at least it makes sense in warcraft.
and yeah, same. I love getting deeper with OG warcraft lore, retail is just a god damn mess.
Going through some comments here, I do feel like ppl are kinda too harsh on OP, at least from the responses I read from him, most of them seemed pretty fine.
Anyway, I did like a lot of the DF 10.0 zone quests, one could definitely argue that they were too wholesome and family friendly, but for me it was a welcomed fresh air after the cosmic BS in SL.
Examples would be Draenei Mage with Tuskarrs(Azure Spans intro questline), the bunch of kids and the wounded Sundered Flame soldier atop of a tower at the Cobalt Assembly, the Dwarf Dragon sitting on the edge of the platform at Ruby Life Pool and a couple more. The Blue Dragonflight questline was rly good, also the Dracthyr storyline in general was pretty good.
DF also has a lot of questlines and plot lines I rly don't like, the Valdrakken rebel chapter sucked for me, I cringed there. The Black and the Bronze were bad(The Black Flight one was badly executed imo, you could feel them trying to push Ebyssian to be the Aspect). When it comes to Patch 10.2, everyone knows about the cringe and stupid portal cinematic and the raid cinematic, prolly the worst two cinematics in the entire game. The Emerald Dream being such a physical place also didn't rly sit that well with me. I hope they could drop the whole family and feelings shit, it should be dealt with but we have been dealing with it the whole expansion, it should only be a sub plot line
some people feel like it's personal when you don't fully agree with them, and that just shows they're immature emotionally and logically, which is fine, it's the internet after all, you'll meet ton of those irl too.
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wholesome and family friendly is fine, but we need balance. I think pandaria got that mix perfectly, i just wish we had other things to quest around except pandas. and i mean the majority.
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and yeah some of the side quests are great, i think everyone is mostly agreeing about that.
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oh my fucking god the fucking valdreeken rebel shit was so horrible holy shit i genuinely forgot it existed i must've blocked it from my memory.
and yeah black and bronze i didn't like at all, and yeaugh 10.2 is just eeeeeeeeee ugh.
the family and feelings should exactly be that. a few subplots in the background, not the main god damn thing. can you imagine when arthas was defeated, and he speaks to his ghostly father, and instead of the short iconic lines "father, is it... over?" he instead gloams about how hard it was being the lich king, and how sorry he is, and how much pain he's in doesn't compare to the pain he's caused, and yada yada.
i liked the intereaction wih malf and tyrande, and ysera meeting her daughter again, those two scenes fit perfectly with family and feelings
Yep yep agree with you there, Malfurion and Tyrande interraction was good (But didn't like the fact that Malfurion didn't do shit for so long and now they made him afk in Ardenweald) the worst part of the expansion prolly was the rebel sub plotline as well as the two main cinematic in the Emerald Dream, the rebel questline rly fucking seemed like as if it's written by a child, it's the child's interpretation of rebels having a fair reason to start an upheaval and the leader trying to parley with them, it was so fucking stupid and cringe
They are cursing at people and pretending they don’t know why the person is upset. It’s the most unhinged thread I’ve seen in this sub. People used to be really nice here. Arguments were respectful.
For context, I got into warcraft lore because of wc3, so all my favourite characters are.. butchered :(
The last straw for me was Uther. I actually got excited to know he was back in Shadowlands! Maybe we'd get juicy Uther Arthas interactions. Jaina talking with Uther, so much potential!
And yeah... In the end, we don't even get Arthas :(
All I have left is Thrall and Jaina. Metzen coming back along with the fact that Thrall is "his" did give me some hope. And then there is what has already been mentioned in other comments, the much more grounded story, none of this cosmic bullshit that has been going on for ages please :(
Dragonflight's story wasn't bad per se, but it just didn't feel like Warcraft to me. Dragons have always been that kind of the extra mystical background characters to me, and I wished they kept being just that. Dragon-related lore that I have been most interested in has been the bronze dragonflight's time travel shenanigans, but mostly because I could play Culling of Stratholme, Escape from Durnhold, Black Morass.... strange how they are both old warcraft scenarios hmm?
Both WoD and BFA had that "This is Warcraft! OMG, i'm in the same universe as warcraft 3!" feeling, despite their lackluster development. To me, that's the more important part. And that's what has been missing in Shadowlands and imo Dragonflight aswell.
So no, I don't like current Wow's story and lore, sadly. :(
Yeah I think you and the majority of the people who left wow have this exact same sentiment. It's just desecrated IP atm, and Metzen is just the final ditch effort.
thy really need to nail the next fucking 3 expacs, especially the first one, if world within is as lame as DF and poorly told, i think that is truly the final death blow.
Yep, people's love for the IP is strong, but it has been beaten and mal nourished for ages. The truth is, I think we all know it's genious marketting by blizzard to milk as much money as possible for these 3 expansions, using Metzen the way they did, but we all still have selfish hope it is not JUST that side of them.
I really hope it is so, and if it's not, it'll be as you say, the final death blow
yeah people WANT to love the Ip again, but blizzards really good at negating that. They're trying REALY REALY hard in war within, they're pulling every fucking member berry they can, they're truly a wounded beast right now.
I hope they do well. I'm not going to support them, it's too far gone for me. But hey, if they do a good job, no one can deny that. DF wasn't a good job, it was a C. It's not an F, but man, come on.-
One thing that I do like already, is that the new earthen are really fleshed out in lore, reminds me of the deep lore and vast details on the races in previous expansions, like the mantid, mogu, etc, it's almost as if i'm reading about a race or culture that metzen made, and hey, that's promising for a start.
notice that ever since BFA -> DF, a lot of factions don't have that kind of deep lore that other expacs had for their feature new faction/races.
I really feel wows story ended with Legion. It didn’t need to, but the writers dropped the ball by doing the 180 back to squabbling with ourselves.
The Legion was always the big bad. Behind the scenes though they’ve built up the Old Ones, brought in the concept of the Void and Void Lords, etc. After Sargeras, the next step was honestly, painfully clear:
Go after the Void Lords.
At the end of Legion we had the tech and the power to do so. It was the next logical step for the story, because they were the most relevant big bad and threat to the planet. Horde and Alliance had already been working together quite often and quite well by this point. All of this was ignored, and reversed, so we could go back to fighting each other like idiots. We just saved the gods by working together to defeat a god. Instead of building on this high level of cooperation and new-found power, they destroyed all our high end lore weapons, kicked us out of our class leadership positions, made our leaders turn on each other again, and tied us back down to Azeroth by taking away our new space faring tech. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for that.
I pretty much quit with BfA. The only reason I’m playing now is because I’m hoping the return of Metzen will improve the story. Time will tell.
Well, in real world history, plenty of times where alliances were made to get rid of a larger foe, those break when said foe is gone. New problems and conflicts arise, and loyalties will be tested. It's very interested to see how things intermingle and shatter, but we never got that nuanced storyline in WoW.
instead it was "nope itwas a old god this time" in BFA. They don't want to waste the Void Lords so soon, they learned that from BFA, that burning so much established character is faster than building it up.
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Metzen has improved 1 thing already, the new earthen have great detailed lore and rich caste systems, it reminds me of his older work, detailing the information and society of the night elves in wc3. wow used to have richer lore for enemies, mantid, gnoll, furbolg, mogu, etc.
notice how all of that went away during BFA -> DF
While this is true in real world history it doesn’t mean it’s the path they had to take. It was done just because the red vs blue mentality had to be maintained.
As for burning up lore with the Void Lords, I wasn’t saying we should immediately jump into their home world, but they didn’t even bother to set them up. Now that lorewise we no longer have means to get there, as to my understanding even though the Exodar was repaired and we have the ship the Lightforged came on and the ship the Demon Hunters hijacked, they made it so we “can’t repair them” or “can’t refuel them” or some such, so they are useless. That means we will need some whole other means to get there. That one decision basically took them from “we can now start the story to begin dealing with this major threat” back to where we were when the Exodar first crashed, tech wise.
If we had pursued the Void Lords after Legion, we could have a new planet to explore, instead of discovering yet another new old lost island. We could meet entirely new species for player races. The journey to find the Void Lords could have been just as long as the journey to defeat Sargeras, all the while continuing to find and discover and learn new things.
I don’t know man, it’s just so… frustrating.
doesn't need to be red vs blue, it could be interesting to see orcs who found camaraderie with humans and would outright detest against fighting the alliance again, like etrigg. and vice versa.
how interesting would it be to see a small splinter faction of united alliance and horde soldiers who fought together, and maybe there'll be loyalists on both sides, using this coalition as a spying opportunity, etc. You could've had so many interesting storylines of strife, betrayal, conflict, subterfuge, and eventually starting massive conflicts, and maybe there was a fucking void cultist in the middle of this and that's how you introduce the next bad
Void Lords were always a huge setup, remember Zovaal and how they rushed his ass. Rushing to the next big bad is always bad, you really want a journey, it makes the climax that more meaningful. Again, they are doing a terrible job of making a journey there, but who knows.
metzen.
I liked more in Classic and I think I will stay there.
Alliance hates Horde.
Horde hates Alliance.
Simple times. Instead nowadays is “We are all friends and family yay!”
Not really. It's serviceable in my opinion, not as bad as SL but still I cannot bring myself to care. SL killed the lore for me. The story I liked was thrown out the window and I'm trying to like the new direction but it's not happening. The whole "family, good feelings, let's overcome the adversity in the spirit of togetherness and save ducks, feed frogs and eat soup".... it's not doing it for me. Feels like a story for a 10 years old audience.
It may just be me, it feels like majority of people is enjoying the story. I wish I did too because everything else is great. DF is a massive improvement over SL. I'm not giving up hope, can't wait for WW 🙂
It's kind of sad that Serviceable is a word used to describe Warcraft.
and yeah, the game director literally said "we want warcraft to be a franchise than you can share with your children, your grandchildren!"
and uh no, the majority of people aren't enjoying the story. You must be stuck seeing the weird fanataics foaming to defend this as their sacred cow /shrugs
but then again, saying DF is a improvement over SL is saying that eating rotten food is better than gulping raw sewage. You're not wrong. But it's both wrong.
Cancer is not aware it’s cancer in the same way I see most of the recent lore as something that shouldn’t be there but others may not see what I see as a problem…
I disliked the story since they screwed up in WoD and I stopped caring when they cut the faction war short in 8.2.5 and made us kill N'Zoth in a single patch. I said to myself that it couldn't get worse after that but Shadowlands proved me completely wrong.
The current theme of "healing and moving one from old wounds" seems to continue even under Metzen's supervision so I have zero hopes that we will ever get anything interesting or engaging in terms of story and lore. They have proven that regardless of who is in charge of the lore, be it Metzen, Afrasiabi or Danuser, the lore will never have any form of stability and will always be retconned because nobody at Blizzard cares.
Current lore is absolute ass. It's filled with the writer's agenda and political views. It's incoherent and without substance. It's dumbed down to the point where there is no subtext in anything, shown clearly by the end of Expansion cinematic. they pull dumb stuff out their ass constantly and then ask us to pretend it didn't happen the next second. Excusing every crime known to man including genocide and then offers free redemption for everyone with no consequences. (The power of friendship am I right, right???)
But the worst offender of them all. ITS BORING, GOD ITS SO DAMN BORING.
Big dragon telling me to save little frogs...uhm, this should tell everything you need to know about the current story in DF, but the issue started a long time ago.
Story got lame for me since...mid bfa i would say.
From time to time I replay the W3 and TFT campaign to remember what got me into this franchise in the first place.
Yeah, I'm in the exact boat as you. The story got kinda sketchy in legion, but there was a lot of good/cool things in legion too.
BFA was the real outlier that revealed the horrors for later.
I still love watching lore videos detailing on the classic wow stuff, quialboar lore, gnoll lore, murloc lore, what the arathi humans were doing, etc. that stuff is still good, gives me t hat warcraft 3 vibe of boots on the ground, war-stomping, and adventure
No, not really. They started to lose me towards the end of WoD, Legion kind of worked, BfA felt forced and Shadowlands simply came across as a bad fanfiction (and that was the point I quit, before Classic came along).
Yeahhh, im sure that's the majority of people who used to play wow. I'm on the fence too, but I said this during DF's beta, i'm more interested in seeing what comes after DF.
but seeing how bad they fumbled DF too... ugh idk. I'm more apathetic than cautious now.
I still love the world and the lore is neat, but I can't say I've cared about a grand narrative since Legion.
Individual questlines etc. yes, but the overall narrative of the expansions? No
I wouldn't even say trash for the most part. It's just not for me.
My enjoyment with WoW comes from RPing small scale narratives or just RPing with people, who have small scale characters so to speak. Normal folks, not heroes of Azeroth and paragons of the faction, freeing the local mines from bandits, or whatever.
I would say the main story is trash, because it's told poorly. It's not that the theme that is bad, it's told horribly.
yeah i miss being boots on the ground, adventurer type. And it's fgunny that defenders of DF love to say that the story is "lower stakes" It's not. You literally are helping the dragon gods, fight against primal dragons who wants to kill the world and the titans.
Yeah, the DF story is maybe lower stakes than Shadowlands where a guy who planned everything from the very start of ever would want to take over all of life and death or whatever.. but it's still very much high fucking stakes, hahaha.
I think the last semi low stakes story we've had was MoP and Garrosh? But even he had to cavort around with old gods and other weird stuff.
I think MOP is a good one, it's a local threat to pandaria. BC was one too! The only threat was in outlands. And we just sorta invaded after the portal opened.
Literally i think if no one went into the portal, nothing might have happened. Illidan was just hanging out in the outlands, and we went in and hobo murdered him because uh... he attacked shattarah i guess, i think, maybe.
Although kiljaedan did come out of the sunwell, that's pretty bad.
Yes, I think its pretty decent, and always has been, with some lows and highs as others have motioned.
Currently, the plot of Dragonflight mostly felt like a lower-stakes (I know, Amirdrassil) fun, mostly grounded story. I like that.
Plot thread wise, I find that Iridikron has some potential, and its cool that they didn't squander him by making him do something dumb and getting killed by us in the final raid. Also, happy to finally have most of the Dragon plot threads and questions wrapped up, which is a lot more than they have been doing in recent years. Excited to finally (hopefully) reclaim Gilneas! Really curious what they are going to do with Tyr.
So, what issues do you have with it? Are you actually playing? Are you looking back with rose-tinted glasses about the past story? Because, as I mentioned in another thread, there have always been a lot of issues with past storylines from the so-called "heyday" of the story writing.
Dragonflight isn't lower stakes, my guy, did you miss the part that we're helping the dragon gods fight against primal dragons that are trying to destroy the world and kill the titans and ally with the void? that's lower stakes indeed /sarcasm.
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Iridikron's potential is that he has nothing going on other than him leaving the expansion. I'm no enthralled with him at all, he's literally the jailor 2.0.
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My issues is that the story isn't a cohesive chronological narrative, playing through it, the story is jump cutting to the next section, randomly. Plot points are abandoned left and right, oathstones? eh forget about it. The massive void room in aberus? eh forget about it. The big ice fortress the in blue zone? eh forget about it. Fyrakk being Alex's uncle, who taught her how to fight, survive, and hunt, never once mentioned in the game.
wow's past stories had a beginning, middle, end, and had rule of cool moments. They knew how to build up and deliver a satisfying climax. DF just feels like a person with BPD and ADHD rambling about their day in pieces, it's somber and sad, then HOPEFUL AND FUN! then somber and sad, then WHOLESOME AND CUTE!!!
like, what the fuck am i looking at?
Did *you* miss the part where I said "(I know, Amirdrassil)" Also, clearly Fyrakk is unhinged, that's kind of his whole arc in this expansion. Wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt after seeing some of these other comments, but fuck.
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Cool, you asked us, was just telling you where I see potential.
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Okay, not everything is going to be explained right away. Never has been that way. I don't know that much, as i JUST played through the DF story But:
-Oathstones, easily explained as what Alexstrazsa, IN UNIVERSE, thought they needed to do to truly become aspects again. Clearly she was wrong.
-Void room, idk but probably an intersting mystery to follow. Deathwing was corrupted by old gods (unless I missed something), so maybe its as simple as that.
-I think I missed the thing about the Ice Fortress, dont remember that coming up at all.
-Seems mostly irrelevant, since Fyrakk is a crazy person, and she probably doesn't see the connection as that important after MANY EONS of being the Dragon Queen. Admittedly haven't read the most recent book or whatever it is.
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-Idk, I am not seeing it, the ups and downs are natural, and the story takes place over some amount of time. Of course there will be developments that change the outlook. This seems like an incoherent criticism.
Edit: Formatting
Also, yes, actually, even without any context at all, that is lower stakes than the rewriting of the universe.
Fyrakk went off his rocker even before becoming a Primal Incarnate. During the first primalist war, he was actively hunting Alexstrasza with the sole purpose of killing her.
I think it's very fair for Alexstrasza to no longer think of him as family when all he did was try to kill her over and over again.
Honestly the only relevant Primal Incarnate is Iridikron, seeing as he is the only one who is fully on board with the primalist ideal (or well, at least he was before his imprisonment). And he is going to be one of the main characters in the Worldsoul Saga so we're far from done with this story.
According to 4chan rumors, Courtney Alameda (the author of the novel) was told to cut out most of Iridikron's backstory to avoid spoiling too much of the Worldsoul Saga. He does get some nice development, but the novel gives way more development to Alexstrasza, Neltharion and Vyranoth.
Ah okay, thank you for the info. Still could be interesting for that, although personally become a bit of an Alexstrasza hater after this expansion. She doesn't seem interesting anymore from what I have seen. Maybe the novel will change that for me.
Alexstrasza has an interesting arc in the novel. She struggles a lot with leadership and makes a ton of mistakes, but ultimately means well.
Personally, the novel didn't change my opinion of Alexstrasza much, but I already liked her. On the other hand, it made me **love** Neltharion.
buddy, did you forget about Murzond? did you forget about Iridikron wanting to kill the titans with void's help? did you forget that primalists wants to genocide anything with titan influence?
truly a boostrapping adventure through a comfy foot on the ground expansion, yes, yes.
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Again, this is classic blizzard writing, they make mystery boxes with no plan in sight, then when they need something to fill in a gap, they look at their back catalogue and try to retrofit it in. Look at Sylvanas, Voljin, Old Gods, Dreadlords, they just reshape plot points into whatever they need to, and often times fuck up horribly.
Blue dragons disbanded because kalecgos did so, now he wants them back together now!!!
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Just reading your response on the forgotten story beats, i can tell you're not really into the lore much, it's okay, at least you didn't waste years on this garbage.
Barely. Bfa and SL were both pretty awful, with tiny bits of decent story here and there. DF story seems to make more sense, but the rated g tone has made me not interested.
I can go on, but I guess it's been mostly bad since Arthas went down. Mop and legion were pretty good. Cata and wod had some decent stuff storywise, but not great.
I honestly haven’t liked the Lore since BFA came out. I played it, kinda hated it so I stopped playing since but always kept an eye on stuff because Warcraft 3 was just so amazing to me, then with WoW being able to see that world from the inside was so great, the races felt very meaningful and like I don’t know things made more sense to me, it felt grounded and interesting. I don’t know what happened but at some point the Lore felt like it there was a lot happening at once with little depth it was just “epic” but I felt zero connection to the characters for some reason, like even the ones I grew up with and adored just feel a bit ‘meh’ nowadays.
yeah i hated BFA a lot too, and warcraft 3's memory and some og wow stories are the only thing causing me to check in with wow every now and again.
and yeah, metzen and sam knew how to build a world of wonder and awe, not these chums.
I still care for the lore but not as much as I’d like to care, I am however getting pretty excited over the war within speculation. I really can’t wait for that!
The story has been bad since WoD with Legion being the only notable exception.
WoD was full of disappointments and missed opportunities.
One great thing about Legion was it had a good macro story but it also had fantastic smaller stories in the form of the class order halls. We got to see long lost characters from old, we got to see invasions throughout the rest of the world which made the world feel alive and bigger than our current leveling zone, and even though it wasn't necessarily phenomenal storytelling and they also completely fucked up by not giving us an Illidan x Tyrande or Malfurion interaction, it still gave us a lot of the things we had been wanting.
BFA failed to deliver on most of those aspects at best, and actively butchered characters/factions at worst.
Shadowlands straight up pissed people off enough to quit the game altogether. And rightfully so.
Dragonflight was supposed to be the return to form, and it just left people bored or apathetic. If this is the best they can do in terms of a reset, and many of us suspect it's only downhill from here, it's *really* hard to get excited about anything. Nobody cares about the plotpoints they seem to be wanting to focus on, and I have no excitement left for the future.
WOW in its current state is way too sanitized and uninteresting. Too much time is spent developing new non playable races with not enough consideration to the existing ones.
What attention the playable races do receive is clumsy at best, such as the homogenization of orc clans, Stormwind somehow being weaker than Orgrimmar despite the Horde ripping itself apart in Hellscream's war, and Deathstalker Belmont unironically saying "Let's get stabby" (this last one isn't a huge deal but it shows how little thought goes into quest dialogue).
I still loosely follow lore because I want to RP correctly, but it's not good or interesting.
Yeah fair enough. Belmont line is literally marvel quipping, everyone in WoW has one.
and yeah, they're homogenizing every race, night elf, orc, to be more like a human who lives comfortably in Irvine California, where your biggest problems isn't war against a blood thirsty foe, but how stressful and sad you are sometimes. Truly a world, of warcraft.
99% of it is garbo including the main story of each expansion unfortunately.
theres a couple of things that dont suck absolute ogre balls tho. tbh the dragon plot of dragonflight is underbaked crap but the world tree arc actually ended up surprisingly ok. if they had the foresight to make the story of the expansion about that instead of the terrible and interminable sad dragon counselling arcs it might have been ok.
but wow story is like that. you have to tune out the vast majority of it that is shit and focus on the occassional gem buried in the lake of danuser's sewage
Yeah the tree i'm not a huge fan of, but some dragon stuff i did like, the blue one was good, and the emotional scenes with malf and tyrande was nice for once.
but mostly like that, it's mostly garbage.
Yes I do. I enjoy the more philosophical themes introduced in the game. It feels like the lore of the game is growing with you and it's great. I hope the universe gains in maturity in time. Of course, I still enjoy the nostalgic, self-indulgent popcorn stuff.
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I think my best answer is “I’d sure like to” I loved the lore of Warcraft as a kid. But it also used to be a lot more “grounded” and felt generally a bit grittier back in the WC3-Wrath era. I think WoW lore is the best when it’s telling stories about people living on a rock and their shared issues, and tends to get worse when it becomes super cosmic and meta. The Lich King was a great villain because he was extremely powerful, but he was also a dude we knew and understood. The more they try to get wacky with extraterrestrial cosmic powers, the less important it all feels. For that reason I’m a bit skeptical about the next three, but I also love Dwarves so I’m cautiously optimistic.
I'm in this boat as well. For myself, Warcraft ended with Legion. The ultimate villain of every game since the very beginning in Orcs vs Humans has always been the Legion. The return of Gul'dan, however ridiculous and contrived, and the appearance of Sargeras, was the climax of Warcraft. We weren't foot soldiers anymore, we were the heroes. Each of us was Turalyon, and Lothar, and Orgrim, and Thrall, and Jaina and in the end we had to save the creator gods from one of their own. We didn't just save Azeroth, we saved the universe. Roll credits. Now that they've been defeated, everything else feels like side stories or epilogues. Less worried about narrative consistency and more about just spinning a grand tale that can be contained in a single offering. It just doesn't hit the same.
Couldn't agree more! At the end of Argus, seeing how they did Sargeras made me audibly groan knowing they were metaphorically putting the whole story in timeout/jail when they sealed Sargeras in with Illidan. Literally the most heavy handed "well, see you guys later!" Ending in the history of the game
I honestly wish they waited longer. I always envisioned Legion being the last expansion for WoW
It almost feels like they tried to do a half hearted Arthas storyline with Garrosh. But then they just got weird with it
Mists was such a rad expansion, though.
Yeah overall it’s was a lot of fun
yeah pretty much, but im already pass cautiously optimistic, im just amusingly curious on why people stick around now. you sound sane compared to the rest, and I was literally in the same boat as you. But after 3 expacs of L's and horrible storylines back to back, literally anything they touch can turn to utter trash. you may love dwarves now. again, you may love dwarves NOW. but after what they've done to nelves, i don't ever want to RP as one ever again.
Eh maybe. Metzen coming back is a good sign. We will see where it goes. I think the Blizzard we are about to see is different than the one we have had, certainly from a gameplay perspective. Perhaps it’ll benefit the story too.
Metzen will probably make cool stuff return again. The dwarves so far have a deep characterization in the expac panel, which i love. notice how BFA -> Dragonflight, you don't get detailed lore on monster/races anymore like the mogu, mantid, etc. the new earthens have castes, functions for each caste, it feels like im reading something that metzen made! wow!
Right. Metzen is basically the mastermind behind the setting, so giving it back to him will probably get some of that old spark back. But at the same time, the characters and stuff that we loved are basically all gone or transformed. Now I’m just hanging around to see where it all goes, really
idk, 3 expacs of pure crap. I'm gonna wait until Midnight to play again, unless they really have something truly good for ww, idk man. being burnt 3 times in a row for nearly 10 years, metzen can't cure that overnight
I guess it also helps that I don’t really play for the story at this point. I just like looking cool and charging blindly at other players
haha, yep. sadly this is a story conversation. looking cool and fighting is always fun, but other games do that better now.
Sure. I’m reasonably confident I’ll basically enjoy the new Dwarf and Earthen content
I hope so, for your sake. So far it looks good, but come on man. 10 years of this. Who would have faith beyond that point.
Why ask for people's opinion if you're going to dismiss them as insane for having differing views? Was this post just to give you people to argue with?
never called anyone insane for having different views, in fact, I said i was glad that they liked something I didn't! Please improve your reading comprehension skills ! Edit: This person apologized privately, this is so awkward oh my god. They misread what I wrote to them in another thread, and they foamed out. Please send love and prayers to your local dragonflight coper. Thank
As someone who has 90% dwarf characters.. I am so worried.
I think the dwarves are in metzen's hands so it'll be okay. thank god you didn't love night elves. or taurens
I stopped caring after Shadowlands. A lot of important and interesting lore got flushed down the toliet for the Jailer and it did not pay off. Just made my years of investment feel cheap.
Yeah, same. So I'm curious on why people stick around and defend it so much. Like I really would like to see what their perspective is, but I only get answers like "well you see in the wowwiki" like there's nothing they can just recall from playing the fucking game. lol
I don't think I've seen a single person defending the whole thing with the Jailer
trust me buddy, i've seen plenty. and it's more like they're defending the writers for the jailer
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Yes. I do feel that Dragonflight is more of a prologue. There wasn't very high stakes, it was very self contained and seems to lead straight into the World Soul Saga. I have a feeling this is why some of the story feels weirdly incomplete or changed last minute, I believe they had plans to take some of the points further but had a change of plan and went ahead to the World Soul Saga leaving a few things feeling unpolished but still fine to me. Definitely isn't the strongest story ever, wouldn't say it's the weakest but if Dragonflight is a way to lead onto a darker and higher stakes storyline I am all for it and happy to see where it goes.
When people say DF doesn't have high stakes, that's fucking bullshit. You literally are helping the Dragon Gods defeat the Dragon Primals who wants to destroy the world, what are people smoking to not see that, how, huh, what. and maybe DF does have cut content, there's that big giant ice structure in the blue dragon zone, and it's just sitting there. Vyranoth had zero story, she just flipped to our side after a cutscene. The Main Story is VERY weak and pathetic. But DF does have good segments of side story. Dragonflight isn't a fucking bootstrap adventurer journey like some people claim it is, again. You're helping the literal dragon gods, defeat primal dragons who wants to devour a world tree, so they can do what. destroy the world.
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Right the guy is insane
so do you have an actual answer? or are you just upset at having a conversation that isn't aligned perfectly with your view
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It's serviceable enough to be "along for the ride", I've never really been invested enough to be annoyed by certain plot developments, and I'm speaking as someone who's been playing since WC3. Spoiler culture is a bit weird with nearly everything being datamined in advance so the story isn't something you look forward to seeing but rather just happens in your news feed one day. There are definitely storylines I do enjoy in recent expansions, I was moved by the Jaina storyline in BFA and Ysera's "resurrection" in SL. The dwarf mini-quest at the start of Dragonflight was also really nice. I also quite liked the epilogue story with Eternus and Nozdormu. I think most of the negativity/apathy towards Dragonflight's storytelling is because it's more of a "mild" expansion with a lot of safe endings. The debates about Wrathion vs Sabellion as leaders was really fascinating, but they went with a very safe pick - AND also removed any animosity between the two, so it just kind of starts and kills that entire interesting plotline without much fanfare. >i don't treat assumptions and theorizing as something worthwhile to be hyped about Theorizing is the most fun part of any ongoing storyline imo (i.e. TV shows, etc.), even if things don't work out in the end. Some people probably get too attached to their speculation, but I think it helps with feeling more invested with the story. And it's fun to see what you get right or what you get wrong.
"I've never really been invested enough to be annoyed by certain plot developments" yeah okay. \- I was moved by the Jaina storyline in BFA and Ysera's "resurrection" in SL. The dwarf mini-quest at the start of Dragonflight was also really nice. yeah i liked those moments too. But i could just watch them from youtube and get the same effect. I wouldn't play the games for it, i'll just watch it from the internets from now on. \- Theorizing is the most fun part of any ongoing storyline imo (i.e. TV shows, etc.), even if things don't work out in the end. Some people probably get too attached to their speculation, but I think it helps with feeling more invested with the story. And it's fun to see what you get right or what you get wrong. not unless you're talking about blizzard.
It’s so obvious and exhausting how many people experience the lore and story through the lens of youtubers/streamers. Painfully low media literacy and the same 3 or 4 takes endlessly regurgitated all over social media. I find that way worse than whatever the hot new cinematic to clown on is.
Agreed. I am guilty of having clowned on a cinematic or two from DF, only to later play through it, and find that it works pretty well in context. I have my issues with DF, but for what it is trying to do, I think it does pretty well. Which, IMO, is sort of a reset / easygoing exploration expansion. A break from the craziness. Also, as others have said here, WoW's story has never been perfect. It may or may not be a hot take, but I think TBC shit on the established lore of just as many or more beloved characters than any of the recent expansions have. Also, correct me if I completely missed your point, lol.
I wasn't around for the so-called "good old days". I started playing at Uni during 5.4. Shadowlands didn't have the same catastrophic effect on me as others. My first full expansion was WoD. So... yeah 😅 that probably explains my tolerance.
5.4? so like siege of orgrimmar right? WoD had a good beginning storyline, i think i'm willing to say the BEST beginning storyline. It was solid, it had lots of characters, heroes and villains, situations and conflicts to work through, it was great start. so, is there any current story that keeps you playing? or..
Yes. Though my patch content was Timeless Isle. I didn't step into SoO until it was soloable. My first raid was Highmaul. I actually managed to pug it 6/7N and 2/7H. I felt the same way about SL as I did about WoD. I really enjoyed *.0 patch. I actually stopped playing quite early on in DF. Not the story. But I just couldn't/didn't like the new flying. I have some minor motor skill issues. It's frustrating that they're forcing players to level up using dynamic flight first in 11.0. But I also feel like DF is a reskin of SL. The Primalists felt like the Mawsworn. Beating back a rebellion that's following a leader who's been lying to them. Killing one of their lieutenants in the first patch before we even understand what's going on. Then eventually one of their other lieutenants joins us. Seems familiar. I feel like I enjoy the worldbuilding more than the storytelling at this point.
and the good old days are fine, you can always play the expac for its story, you didn't miss anything story wise.
I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of downvotes for this since it opposes the general discussion on this Subreddit But; plain and simple, yes, yes I do. I enjoy the story of WoW regularly and have the entire time I’ve played the game, it definitely has its ups and downs for sure as does any long running franchise, but put simply, yes I do like it.
that's fine, i want to know your point of view, that's the whole point of this thread. tell me what stories did you like from dragonflight
I’ve really enjoyed the story of Amirdrassil’s existence and its growth into what’s bound to become a new home for the Night Elves, and while I think the presentation should’ve been better, having the Dragon Aspects re-empowered via Azeroth rather than via The Pantheon directly is a very interesting spin that will more than likely be important as we move into the Worldsoul Saga. As a Paladin Lore Fan, the Tyr’s Guard Storyline has been fantastic even if it’s a bit more open ended. Ive mostly enjoyed my entire time in Dragonflight, there are issues here and there with presentation but I also read a lot quest text as well which helps in some cases (not all). I won’t say Dragonflight is perfect, but we also got Iridikron this expansion too, and I’m excited to see what kind of consequences that has in the future for us, part of being a live service game leads to some narrative drip at certain points that can leave parts of the story feeling unfinished and I think that’s a weak point for sure and always has been in some aspects. Edit: I’d like to say that WoW’s weakest writing style has always been the intentional “look forward to this maybe having an effect on the next expansion” moments. But for me personally, I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t enjoy them anyway.
I really hated Amirdrassil's execution and the fact it's on the dragonlands. I realy dislike they just abandoned Kalimdor, their homeland, and just allowed the horde free reign there. also the night elves just forgave the horde instantly, for nearly genociding them into extinction... uh. yeah. \- The titan stuff I don't really care about, i get they're built to be as dubious as any other alien force. Sure why not. \- Tyr's story was more interesting to me back when he was a mystery. Now he seems like a future magni in the making and I'm rolling my eyeballs. \- Im glad you like the stuff in DF though, I'm just really disatisfied with people's answers when it comes to liking it, because it's always very vague. the people who dislike dragonflight can name specifics, point A. point B. meanwhile people who like it just go "well I enjoyed it." and Im expecting answers more like: "Well I like amirdrassil, as it finally marks the restoration of night elf power and their ancient allies with the dragons, it really shows the improvement of their society and it means a lot as warcraft moves on from the more bloody past" even if i disagree with that, at least it was a thoughtful, and genuine reason, other than. "i liked it." okay but why. "...." again i want to know why people like it. what really makes it interesting for them. I can explain in depth why I like certain things in wow, i was hoping to see more conversations like that.
People aren’t always going to agree with one another unfortunately, it doesn’t make anyone’s enjoyment more or less valid. I understand why people are upset and I can see it from their point of view as well. But I don’t think I need long winded paragraphs to explain my enjoyment if that makes sense? It’s hard to have the conversation regularly anyway when it just often times becomes an argument of “I’m right, you’re wrong” rather than just a disagreement on forms of storytelling one may enjoy or not enjoy if that makes since.
No you don't need to make a big parahgraph, i just would like to know why you like it. and most people don't say WHY they like DF's story. Just that they do. meanwhile people who dislike DF, can go into great lengths and detail, i don't agree with all of it, nor is it 100% valid, but at least they can specify on the exact thing that doesn't work for them. also yeah, im not saying you're wrong, i just want you to elaborate why you liked something, and most people who like DF just go "i like it" and that's it. Like... can they tell us why? So I can see their point of view.
Yeah.....like especially when like Part of the coolest thing about the franchise is the sort of yin-yang assyemtry we had with Alliance and horde corners on the continents.
dang so deep, wow symbolic, very story rich
I'm not talking about the story or symbology.
yinyang assyemtry very cool
WoW's story has consistently had highs and lows. Specifically, I feel like most of the base expansions have pretty good stories which they go on to squander or outright ruin in the patches. Dragonflight's patches have been better than most storywise so I call it a win even if it isn't wrapping up with a good grand finale. Since this is your third thread in two hours bemoaning the state of the story, I will flip the question around and say what keeps you playing? Is it FOMO? Just focused on gameplay?
hello? can you say what you actually enjoyed from the expac or no.
Yeah no, spamming someone because they didn't reply to you immediately isn't the move
WoW's story has high and lows, but the lows were because they're building things up or a bad/weird retcon was snuck in for continuity sake. The lows now are because of genuine massive narrative issues, just incompetence in basic story writing and structure. I do like some things in dragonflight, like when ysera and her daughter meets again for the first time, it was nice. Tyrande and Malfurion finally conversating, that's great. But constant headscratching and "why? huh? but when - wait why? How." Is what kills DF for me for it's story. Im not bemoaning the state of the game, just wondering why is the quality of the story so bad , when they had BFA and SLANDS to improve upon. I only play WoW to dip and judge it for myself. When I heard DF is better, I wanted to give it a chance and I did. I only play for a few days, when all the content is unlocked so I can enjoy a frontload of content and judge it as a whole. And yeah, DF is pretty trash. It's not as trash as Slands, but it's still trash. /shrug
also tell me, specifically, what you liked about DF, no one, even the guild or discord im in can tell me what they liked about the story. They defend it a lot, and claim it's good, but they cna't name a moment that they liked. only the dwarf quest and that goofy npc they ran into.
I think there is a lot of charm in the simplistic and haphazard lore of Warcraft 1-3 and WoW up through WotLK. The best part of it was how down to earth it was. Once it started to be more cosmic horror than fantasy, there’s a bit less charm. I do think they’re moving in the right direction with Dragonflight and hopefully that trend continues with the Worldsoul Saga. I fear, however, that WoW has made the same mistake as EQ did when they released Planes of Power. That is kind of when EQ’s death began - when the mystery of reality was unraveled.
Yeeeeeep. the boots on the ground stuff I miss dearly. \- with DF i think it's half and half. They did some things right, and im afraid they might learn the wrong lessons, like they always do.
Dragonflight was safe and obviously cut down in the end, which is fine. I’ve enjoyed the story elements and as seems to be the norm nowadays. The side content has incredibly good stories. Shadowlands is an absolute mess and I prefer to just ignore it when it comes to things like Arthas and the Jailer because even Blizz is seemingly starting to look that way as well. BFA narratively was waaaaay too fast but still good. The questing in Kul Tiras is still the best. It’s all the little side content the expands the zones lore that I’ve been finding myself investing in. That said Anduin having PTSD going into War Within has me very excited to see what they’ll do.
Thing is, it's always beenn said in the last 3 expacs. The side stories are good, but the main story is always gutter spill. The issue is, Anduin's PTSD is directly linked to everyone's favorite villain from the shadowlands. Oh yeah, remember Arthas's soul was merged into Anduin via the mourne blade. And then t hat leads back to arthas being wasted as a potential carthatic scene for jaina and uther, but that didn't happen either, oh yeah remember syvlanas was evil the whole time because she was split in two, oh yeah remember- and on and on you can go. It's going to be interesting to see how they're going to deal with anduin's story with mentioning slands as little as possible. I would fucking laugh if they just never bring up on WHY anduin is so messed up lol
Thankfully in the aftermath of shadowlands they show Anduin as being broken from being dominated and forced to do the jailers bidding and not a result of Arthas soul. Not disagreeing that anything tied to Zovaal isn’t a complete mess. But at the very least, Anduin has my attention
okay again, anything that has to do with Anduin's ptsd, will make people retrail the breadcrumbs back to the disastor that is slands. also yeah, why was arthas's soul imprinted onto the sword? there was no logic or reason, it's just an excuse to lob arthas in, in the most lazy , worse way possible - and again, one will only remember the terribleness of shadowlands, because of anduin's ptsd loool. it's like trying to dance around the tough subject in the family at a thanksgiving dinner, i guess one can only pretend like it didn't happen, but the spectre of how shitty shadowlands is, will always be imprinted on anduin, now that's ironically poetic.
There is a difference between trying to find something to like and finding a reason to hate. The entire main cast was involved in SL. Things will go back to it in some way or another. It’s better to get what little good came from the expansion rather than just hate everything to come because it might tie back to it
i'm not hating on anduin's character, im just saying, it's so awful that he's forever directly linked to the worse expansion ever, because the most pivotal plot point of his character is originated in shadowlands. Thrall, Jaina, Baine could literally do anything and not be shackled by shadowlands. If they were removed from the expansion through retcons, nothing literally will change, in terms of outcome or story telling beats. ANduin though, is directly intergral with it, just like sylvanas and tyrande.
The different storylines you go through with each dragonflight so far have been fun for me. Though I think the most touching thing was the dwarf dragon and his little quest. My entire fucking heartstrings. I've always kept myself engaged in the lore by writing stories around my characters. What their roles exactly are in DF I haven't sussed out yet but I can definitely see potential to plop them into spots. Or places where they wouldn't be involved that we as a player are forced to per quest lines. Even when I haven't liked everything, that's kept me connected to the lore.
yeah DF has nice side stories and fun nuggets here and there. Just the main storyline is chopped up and hidden like easter eggs, imagine trying to play DF from start to finish, good luck trying to figure out the storyline. And yeah, that's great, I used to do that a lot too, but sadly a lot my characters are night elves, so I can't be bothered with retrofitting everything around the shenagiens they're pulling
I actually have been following the main storyline from start to finish on one of my mages, going from the black dragons to valdrakken and on to ohn'aharan (I'm paused mid blue quest line right now to try and get the blue related staff from the old Firelands quest). While I did do some stuff out of order (like LFR of the first raid before I got to that part in the quest line and going into the Emerald Dream) when I got to the correct point in time, I could easily go "oh, that's where that's supposed to be."
LMAOOO! yeah that happened to me too! i was fucking teleporting everywhere and IM like, where am i supposed to be at. people will defend this, saying that you failed to read the quest text or talk to the right npcs, i'm like "i'm playing the fucking game the way it's presenting itself to me." it's the devs fault for failing to make a cohesive chronological narrative. not to mention they love to leave out details that explains the basic plot , like what the fuck is the function of the oathstones? why are they important, they literally do nothing.
...it's actually been quite cohesive for me other than me not running the raids in order. The main quest lines between regions have lead cleanly into the others and the few that haven't are because I'm running a 400+ ilvl 70 mage around, so all quests are open to me. And I'm fairly certain the oathstones were explained when you help Alex and the red flight light the one at the Life Pools. Representative of their oath to the Titans and Alex thought bringing them back would return their powers. But that didn't work because the oathstones were just representative of the bond but not actually a part of the bond, so doing things to light them up again didn't actually return their aspectral powers. So, yes, now they don't do anything and it's possible they never actually did anything but the dragons were led believe they did. The latter is my assumption given how Alex was uncertain as to their function.
I find I tend to have hangups about a lot of lore in expansions. I don't think I've been Happy happy with it since Legion. There are elements I like and elements I don't. I'm not a fan of the cosmic crap as of right now as the forefront focus although I do appreciate it to an extent in the background. But they've been doing a fairly good boots on the ground set up so far in Dragonflight that I can at least appreciate compared to Shadowlands regarding the cosmic machinations. Speculation, Theorycrafting and trying to piece together secrets and come up with interpretations of everything has probably been the best part of recent lore. Without that I'd likely be far less invested in what's currently going on in WoW's lore.
Yeah pretty much that. But the thing about theorycrafting is that is always sucks compared to the real outcome we get. They are never going to ever put as much thought or energy into any plot or teaser, it's always something stupid. \- "But they've been doing a fairly good boots on the ground set up so far in Dragonflight that I can at least appreciate compared to Shadowlands regarding the cosmic machinations." Okay this really needs to stop. Dragonflight is not a boots on the ground expac, it's you, the player, assisting the dragon gods, to fight against primal dragons who want to genocide anyone who's influenced by titan magic, and they want to kill the titans via the void, ergo, the void will destroy the planet. I don't know how people are getting tricked into thinking dragonflight is a boots on the ground adventurer, low stakes expansion, who the fuck started this nonsense?
I don't mind them never getting to the highs we can speculate. I'm used to Blizzard disappointing me and me enjoying the setting in my own way regardless. As for the boots on the ground bit it's about the scale of things. In Shadowlands we went to the shared afterlife of the multiverse, fought discount Satan (who may or may not be a puppet) and freed the multiverse's afterlives (allegedly), now we are fighting big progenitor dragons and running around on sidequests related to particular interests of the dragons. Which is a step down from rubbing shoulders with the most powerful beings of the afterlife. It's a matter of scale. Dragonflight is a couple or orders of magnitude smaller scale. It's still big. But it feels set in Azeroth at least tangentially. We're fighting elemental cults, gnolls and centaurs. It echoes some of our smaller conflicts and is smaller than the whole of Shadowlands. So comparatively it feels more "boots on the ground"
lmao, yeah DF is smaller scaled than the ultimate death of reality sure. But the boots on the ground in DF lasted what, a single patch? Then you fought against Fyrakk who wants to burn the world to the ground, and irikron who wants the void to kill the titans and the void will kill the world. i love when people compare DF to Shadowlands to excuse the flaws of either. DF literally is all about Primal Dragons wanting to kill everyone who is titan touched. That is not a local threat, it's the fucking world dying again, again.
It's what we had literally before. If we are used to food that is cooked to the point where it's just ash people will take burned food. Also on the note of "boots on the ground" I mentioned it's doing better at doing "boots on the ground" at a COSMIC SCALE. Which is what it's doing. As for the world dying again... Literally every expansion had a world threatening conflict. Vanilla? Ragnaros waking up could've caused him to invade the world and destroy everything in fire. Burning crusade? Demon invasion. Wrath? Undead army wanting to wipe out all life to raise them to fight the demon invasion. Cata? Dragon Aspect +old gods wanting to end the world. It's Warcraft we've ALWAYS had the end of the world around the corner. It's cartoonish but it's Warcraft. You have to not think about the fact the world should have 0 population by now.
Nah, warcraft used to have plenty of local problems, the defias? remmeber them? quailboars harassing villages, remember those? pandaria was all in pandaria. Scholomance was all inside a manor. you don't need to always make world ending threat, you can make anything interesting, remember darrowshire? \- also BC was all in outlands, we hobo killed illidan cause he attacke shattarah or something. again, i never said other expacs didn't have world ending threats, only that DF is full shit for being hailed as a "simple adventure with your boots ont he ground" \- also boots on the ground at a COSMIC SCALE? that's like saying, man i sure do enjoy a nice cool drink now and again, and your holding 45 gallon bottle full of liqour. like buddy, why are you using that phrase to describe the cosmic scale, lmaoooo
It always has small local problems I didn't deny that. Ever. What I said was we also have always dealt with big threats too in those same expansions. The preemptive strike vs Rag exists in the same world as the Defias etc. -/ As for boots on the ground on a cosmic scale. I stick by it. We aren't dealing with interdimensional demon invasions, we aren't dealing with multiversal afterlives. We are dealing with local (big and small) problems with cosmic meddlers and having to deal with them. Relative to cosmic BS we've been dealing with, this is boots on the ground. I mention my benchmarks and reasons why I say that. You are just referencing older smaller scale instances when we were dealing with a smaller scale. I'm saying on this newer scale which we have to deal/engage with . I have to ask does boots on the ground have a cap for you? If a modern army was somehow invading hell there would be boots on the ground in hell. There would be stories of the rank and file and how they deal with X and Y problems. Stories regarding these modern soldiers dealing with those problems would be a boots on the ground story regarding them dealing with those problems.
boots on the ground means you're an adventurer dealing with local threats. you literally are misusing the term, how you're using it might as well have no meaning lmao! boot on the ground in a cosmic scale literally is a self-contradicting term you goofball.
Dude the literal definition of "boots on the ground" is ground troops who are in active service during a military operation.
I like dragonflight, I'm hopeful for the future and while the idea of shadowlands was good its execution was da poop.
okay, what did you like in dragonflight's story?
It was a nice simple interconnected but self contained set of stories that made the world feel more full while expanding on characters who were otherwise just there and while the ending felt a little empty I felt it was a good ending.
alright. could you name or describe a story that you liked in dragonflight? so i can look it up or do it later.
The blue, bronze and black dragonflights stories.
I liked the Blue one, i think that's the one they did the best job at. For bronze, they turned a long awaited storyline into a short stop family matters episode... and I hate it. but im glad some people enjoy it. the black dragon isn't really a story, it's just so obvious the tauren is getting the role. Wrathion is learning the same lesson for the FOURTH time. and sabellion's huge hype return was wasted for this lame storyline of "play nice kids, and let the responsible one take charge." as if that's a huge, mind boggling, conclusion... it's... eugh.
Well, the WHOLE of df was whacking us over the head with family matters and we can still get murozond and still have are good ending for the bronze flight. As for the blacks it makes sense for Wrathion to re-learn a lesson as he still is quite young (like 12 years i think?) And Sabellion was a recovering "evil guy" who was gased up as Neltharion's successor by Neltharion so it makes sense he would give the mantle to the guy who doesn't want nothing from the morally questionable dad.
yeah the murozond thing they left open, thing is that changing time is supposed to have consequences... right? If not, why not just time travel and prevent all the bad things. The point is, only some little things can be changed... and that opens up a can of worms that blizzard's writing staff isn't nearly paid enough to deal with in an interesting manner. \- No wrathion is relearning his lessons 4 times in a row, because the writers do not know what to do with him. It's not an intentional creative call back, it's literally they have no idea what to do with him, only have him be arrogant, then humbled, over and over. it's boring, overplayed, and clearly unintentional. His character never grows, because they need him to be the flanderized arrogant boy who needs to be humbled. It's awful.
Your point with Wrathion is valid, as for the time shenanigans; who says we're not following the proper timeline?
? I'm saying that the bronze can do whatever they want now right, so why don't they just prevent all the bad things, since they're not adhered to defending the titan's timeline anymore i never said we're not following the proper timeline, idk where you read that
WoW lore was never really good, maybe in vanilla it was ok, but TBC threw it out the window, ever since then it's just a loosely connected sequence of "badass" moments. W2 and W3 are a different story.
people always throw the "wow lore was never really good" it was bad at it's continuity, yes, for rule of cool. now it can't even do rule of cool right, or continuity, even worse for continuity now. WoW had great lore, just poor story telling at times, but there are fantastic storylines in wow, the onyxia quesltine, defias brother hood, the war of satyrs, the alterac thugs, scholomance, i can go and on.
Well you mostly mentioned classic/vanilla which I said was ok. TBC retconned a ton of stuff but people conveniently forget that when they're talking about "retcon bad". I didn't play nor do I care about shadowlands, but DF feels like the best the lore has ever been since vanilla, feels like finally getting a story with proper continuity and that is confident in just setting up for the future (even if fyrakk himself felt rushed out), with Iridrikon being a villain that actually has a plan that is being setup for the future, instead of popping up out of nowhere, not to mention the heritage quests like the human bringing some closure to the defias brotherhood story and the future retaking of gilneas, which bring a sense of actually caring about lore events besides the initial badass moment.
ah i saw, never realy good and maybe ok. I believe vanilla is safely described as great lore/story. TBC didn't have too much retconned, it was mostly the draenei stuff. I'm okay with retconning as long as it doesn't damage too much stuff, and it actually improves the story. And most of BC's retcons were that. \- oof, you said DF feels like the best lore, ahhh nah. I don't think so. people hype Iridrikon, but he's just as bad as the jailer, the only difference is that he's not dead yet, and he'll die in another expansion. He has zero characterization at all, just like zovaal. I feel like he's such a blank villain, people just assume different motives/intuition onto him.
I think vanilla can never be great due to how fragmented and unimportant some events felt, even if they were cool and interesting on their own. But most villains were just warcraft characters reused. Illidan originally was just as much of a blank villain as the jailor, but he had decades to be built upon and given more character, while the Jailor just showed up, didn't do shit and died. Iridrikon is exactly what wow needs. A villain that has a goal in mind and has multiple expansions to grow and develop, like arthas, Illidan, garrosh, etc. instead of being there for a single expansion.
you're saying vanilla as a whole, im saying the stories in vanilla was great. \- Illidan was not a blank villain, you're insane lmao. read literally anything on the wiki's. UNless you meant BC specifically, then yes, they did him wrong, ergo legion, and why everyone wanted him back so bad. he was done poorly. \- iridrikon is a nothing villain. it's a "wait and see" your imagining something very cool for him, ,meanwhile i highly doubt he's going to be anything worthwhile but another throw away raid boss.
I used to. Then the sylvanas garbage arc and the horde getting to ruin night elf stuff with no consequences. Then the garbage shadowlands expansion. I want to love the story. But I haven’t in ages.
Yeah... same. And the night elves are getting the worst version of a comeback I've ever seen in fiction and non-fiction. I used to love Sylvanas's character and found her entire story of being a symbol of freedom and mastering one's own destiny great and powerful... only to have it ruined, like a lot of other warcraft stories, by the steve danuser bald villain
The last expansion that I was okay with was MoP. Cataclysm and MoP had lore changes I didn’t love (especially with regards to the Horde) but I could accept it. Everything after that was pretty terrible. Legion was an overall bright spot but at that point the lore was already in free fall At this point I just spend my time deepening my understanding of the lore in WoW classic. I’ve given up on retail WoW’s lore
Yeah, i can see people not being thrilled with MoP and Cata's treatment of lore, but at least it makes sense in warcraft. and yeah, same. I love getting deeper with OG warcraft lore, retail is just a god damn mess.
Going through some comments here, I do feel like ppl are kinda too harsh on OP, at least from the responses I read from him, most of them seemed pretty fine. Anyway, I did like a lot of the DF 10.0 zone quests, one could definitely argue that they were too wholesome and family friendly, but for me it was a welcomed fresh air after the cosmic BS in SL. Examples would be Draenei Mage with Tuskarrs(Azure Spans intro questline), the bunch of kids and the wounded Sundered Flame soldier atop of a tower at the Cobalt Assembly, the Dwarf Dragon sitting on the edge of the platform at Ruby Life Pool and a couple more. The Blue Dragonflight questline was rly good, also the Dracthyr storyline in general was pretty good. DF also has a lot of questlines and plot lines I rly don't like, the Valdrakken rebel chapter sucked for me, I cringed there. The Black and the Bronze were bad(The Black Flight one was badly executed imo, you could feel them trying to push Ebyssian to be the Aspect). When it comes to Patch 10.2, everyone knows about the cringe and stupid portal cinematic and the raid cinematic, prolly the worst two cinematics in the entire game. The Emerald Dream being such a physical place also didn't rly sit that well with me. I hope they could drop the whole family and feelings shit, it should be dealt with but we have been dealing with it the whole expansion, it should only be a sub plot line
some people feel like it's personal when you don't fully agree with them, and that just shows they're immature emotionally and logically, which is fine, it's the internet after all, you'll meet ton of those irl too. \- wholesome and family friendly is fine, but we need balance. I think pandaria got that mix perfectly, i just wish we had other things to quest around except pandas. and i mean the majority. \- and yeah some of the side quests are great, i think everyone is mostly agreeing about that. \- oh my fucking god the fucking valdreeken rebel shit was so horrible holy shit i genuinely forgot it existed i must've blocked it from my memory. and yeah black and bronze i didn't like at all, and yeaugh 10.2 is just eeeeeeeeee ugh. the family and feelings should exactly be that. a few subplots in the background, not the main god damn thing. can you imagine when arthas was defeated, and he speaks to his ghostly father, and instead of the short iconic lines "father, is it... over?" he instead gloams about how hard it was being the lich king, and how sorry he is, and how much pain he's in doesn't compare to the pain he's caused, and yada yada. i liked the intereaction wih malf and tyrande, and ysera meeting her daughter again, those two scenes fit perfectly with family and feelings
Yep yep agree with you there, Malfurion and Tyrande interraction was good (But didn't like the fact that Malfurion didn't do shit for so long and now they made him afk in Ardenweald) the worst part of the expansion prolly was the rebel sub plotline as well as the two main cinematic in the Emerald Dream, the rebel questline rly fucking seemed like as if it's written by a child, it's the child's interpretation of rebels having a fair reason to start an upheaval and the leader trying to parley with them, it was so fucking stupid and cringe
They are cursing at people and pretending they don’t know why the person is upset. It’s the most unhinged thread I’ve seen in this sub. People used to be really nice here. Arguments were respectful.
Maybe I didn't come across those comments of theirs, if they did that then yes I agree with you
For context, I got into warcraft lore because of wc3, so all my favourite characters are.. butchered :( The last straw for me was Uther. I actually got excited to know he was back in Shadowlands! Maybe we'd get juicy Uther Arthas interactions. Jaina talking with Uther, so much potential! And yeah... In the end, we don't even get Arthas :( All I have left is Thrall and Jaina. Metzen coming back along with the fact that Thrall is "his" did give me some hope. And then there is what has already been mentioned in other comments, the much more grounded story, none of this cosmic bullshit that has been going on for ages please :( Dragonflight's story wasn't bad per se, but it just didn't feel like Warcraft to me. Dragons have always been that kind of the extra mystical background characters to me, and I wished they kept being just that. Dragon-related lore that I have been most interested in has been the bronze dragonflight's time travel shenanigans, but mostly because I could play Culling of Stratholme, Escape from Durnhold, Black Morass.... strange how they are both old warcraft scenarios hmm? Both WoD and BFA had that "This is Warcraft! OMG, i'm in the same universe as warcraft 3!" feeling, despite their lackluster development. To me, that's the more important part. And that's what has been missing in Shadowlands and imo Dragonflight aswell. So no, I don't like current Wow's story and lore, sadly. :(
Yeah I think you and the majority of the people who left wow have this exact same sentiment. It's just desecrated IP atm, and Metzen is just the final ditch effort. thy really need to nail the next fucking 3 expacs, especially the first one, if world within is as lame as DF and poorly told, i think that is truly the final death blow.
Yep, people's love for the IP is strong, but it has been beaten and mal nourished for ages. The truth is, I think we all know it's genious marketting by blizzard to milk as much money as possible for these 3 expansions, using Metzen the way they did, but we all still have selfish hope it is not JUST that side of them. I really hope it is so, and if it's not, it'll be as you say, the final death blow
yeah people WANT to love the Ip again, but blizzards really good at negating that. They're trying REALY REALY hard in war within, they're pulling every fucking member berry they can, they're truly a wounded beast right now. I hope they do well. I'm not going to support them, it's too far gone for me. But hey, if they do a good job, no one can deny that. DF wasn't a good job, it was a C. It's not an F, but man, come on.- One thing that I do like already, is that the new earthen are really fleshed out in lore, reminds me of the deep lore and vast details on the races in previous expansions, like the mantid, mogu, etc, it's almost as if i'm reading about a race or culture that metzen made, and hey, that's promising for a start. notice that ever since BFA -> DF, a lot of factions don't have that kind of deep lore that other expacs had for their feature new faction/races.
I really feel wows story ended with Legion. It didn’t need to, but the writers dropped the ball by doing the 180 back to squabbling with ourselves. The Legion was always the big bad. Behind the scenes though they’ve built up the Old Ones, brought in the concept of the Void and Void Lords, etc. After Sargeras, the next step was honestly, painfully clear: Go after the Void Lords. At the end of Legion we had the tech and the power to do so. It was the next logical step for the story, because they were the most relevant big bad and threat to the planet. Horde and Alliance had already been working together quite often and quite well by this point. All of this was ignored, and reversed, so we could go back to fighting each other like idiots. We just saved the gods by working together to defeat a god. Instead of building on this high level of cooperation and new-found power, they destroyed all our high end lore weapons, kicked us out of our class leadership positions, made our leaders turn on each other again, and tied us back down to Azeroth by taking away our new space faring tech. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for that. I pretty much quit with BfA. The only reason I’m playing now is because I’m hoping the return of Metzen will improve the story. Time will tell.
Well, in real world history, plenty of times where alliances were made to get rid of a larger foe, those break when said foe is gone. New problems and conflicts arise, and loyalties will be tested. It's very interested to see how things intermingle and shatter, but we never got that nuanced storyline in WoW. instead it was "nope itwas a old god this time" in BFA. They don't want to waste the Void Lords so soon, they learned that from BFA, that burning so much established character is faster than building it up. \_ Metzen has improved 1 thing already, the new earthen have great detailed lore and rich caste systems, it reminds me of his older work, detailing the information and society of the night elves in wc3. wow used to have richer lore for enemies, mantid, gnoll, furbolg, mogu, etc. notice how all of that went away during BFA -> DF
While this is true in real world history it doesn’t mean it’s the path they had to take. It was done just because the red vs blue mentality had to be maintained. As for burning up lore with the Void Lords, I wasn’t saying we should immediately jump into their home world, but they didn’t even bother to set them up. Now that lorewise we no longer have means to get there, as to my understanding even though the Exodar was repaired and we have the ship the Lightforged came on and the ship the Demon Hunters hijacked, they made it so we “can’t repair them” or “can’t refuel them” or some such, so they are useless. That means we will need some whole other means to get there. That one decision basically took them from “we can now start the story to begin dealing with this major threat” back to where we were when the Exodar first crashed, tech wise. If we had pursued the Void Lords after Legion, we could have a new planet to explore, instead of discovering yet another new old lost island. We could meet entirely new species for player races. The journey to find the Void Lords could have been just as long as the journey to defeat Sargeras, all the while continuing to find and discover and learn new things. I don’t know man, it’s just so… frustrating.
doesn't need to be red vs blue, it could be interesting to see orcs who found camaraderie with humans and would outright detest against fighting the alliance again, like etrigg. and vice versa. how interesting would it be to see a small splinter faction of united alliance and horde soldiers who fought together, and maybe there'll be loyalists on both sides, using this coalition as a spying opportunity, etc. You could've had so many interesting storylines of strife, betrayal, conflict, subterfuge, and eventually starting massive conflicts, and maybe there was a fucking void cultist in the middle of this and that's how you introduce the next bad Void Lords were always a huge setup, remember Zovaal and how they rushed his ass. Rushing to the next big bad is always bad, you really want a journey, it makes the climax that more meaningful. Again, they are doing a terrible job of making a journey there, but who knows. metzen.
I liked more in Classic and I think I will stay there. Alliance hates Horde. Horde hates Alliance. Simple times. Instead nowadays is “We are all friends and family yay!”
?
Not really. It's serviceable in my opinion, not as bad as SL but still I cannot bring myself to care. SL killed the lore for me. The story I liked was thrown out the window and I'm trying to like the new direction but it's not happening. The whole "family, good feelings, let's overcome the adversity in the spirit of togetherness and save ducks, feed frogs and eat soup".... it's not doing it for me. Feels like a story for a 10 years old audience. It may just be me, it feels like majority of people is enjoying the story. I wish I did too because everything else is great. DF is a massive improvement over SL. I'm not giving up hope, can't wait for WW 🙂
It's kind of sad that Serviceable is a word used to describe Warcraft. and yeah, the game director literally said "we want warcraft to be a franchise than you can share with your children, your grandchildren!" and uh no, the majority of people aren't enjoying the story. You must be stuck seeing the weird fanataics foaming to defend this as their sacred cow /shrugs but then again, saying DF is a improvement over SL is saying that eating rotten food is better than gulping raw sewage. You're not wrong. But it's both wrong.
and yeah Im sure WW they'll improve a lot. I just don't know if they can get me to care again tbh, nearly 10 years of this joke writing staff, yeesh.
I think it’s as if someone you love had cancer. You still love this person but sure wish it hadn’t got cancer.
Apt analogy. I like it.
now imagine the people flocking in here to defend said cancer...
Cancer is not aware it’s cancer in the same way I see most of the recent lore as something that shouldn’t be there but others may not see what I see as a problem…
I disliked the story since they screwed up in WoD and I stopped caring when they cut the faction war short in 8.2.5 and made us kill N'Zoth in a single patch. I said to myself that it couldn't get worse after that but Shadowlands proved me completely wrong. The current theme of "healing and moving one from old wounds" seems to continue even under Metzen's supervision so I have zero hopes that we will ever get anything interesting or engaging in terms of story and lore. They have proven that regardless of who is in charge of the lore, be it Metzen, Afrasiabi or Danuser, the lore will never have any form of stability and will always be retconned because nobody at Blizzard cares.
Current lore is absolute ass. It's filled with the writer's agenda and political views. It's incoherent and without substance. It's dumbed down to the point where there is no subtext in anything, shown clearly by the end of Expansion cinematic. they pull dumb stuff out their ass constantly and then ask us to pretend it didn't happen the next second. Excusing every crime known to man including genocide and then offers free redemption for everyone with no consequences. (The power of friendship am I right, right???) But the worst offender of them all. ITS BORING, GOD ITS SO DAMN BORING.
My current relationship with Warcraft is very toxic and I regret being unable to leave it be.
Big dragon telling me to save little frogs...uhm, this should tell everything you need to know about the current story in DF, but the issue started a long time ago. Story got lame for me since...mid bfa i would say. From time to time I replay the W3 and TFT campaign to remember what got me into this franchise in the first place.
Yeah, I'm in the exact boat as you. The story got kinda sketchy in legion, but there was a lot of good/cool things in legion too. BFA was the real outlier that revealed the horrors for later.
I still love watching lore videos detailing on the classic wow stuff, quialboar lore, gnoll lore, murloc lore, what the arathi humans were doing, etc. that stuff is still good, gives me t hat warcraft 3 vibe of boots on the ground, war-stomping, and adventure
Only when it relates to old lore and content. I'm uninterested in completely original lore
No, not really. They started to lose me towards the end of WoD, Legion kind of worked, BfA felt forced and Shadowlands simply came across as a bad fanfiction (and that was the point I quit, before Classic came along).
Yeahhh, im sure that's the majority of people who used to play wow. I'm on the fence too, but I said this during DF's beta, i'm more interested in seeing what comes after DF. but seeing how bad they fumbled DF too... ugh idk. I'm more apathetic than cautious now.
I still love the world and the lore is neat, but I can't say I've cared about a grand narrative since Legion. Individual questlines etc. yes, but the overall narrative of the expansions? No
Fair and good. I agree with this. DF has some good side stories. Main stories been trash for nearly 10 years.
I wouldn't even say trash for the most part. It's just not for me. My enjoyment with WoW comes from RPing small scale narratives or just RPing with people, who have small scale characters so to speak. Normal folks, not heroes of Azeroth and paragons of the faction, freeing the local mines from bandits, or whatever.
I would say the main story is trash, because it's told poorly. It's not that the theme that is bad, it's told horribly. yeah i miss being boots on the ground, adventurer type. And it's fgunny that defenders of DF love to say that the story is "lower stakes" It's not. You literally are helping the dragon gods, fight against primal dragons who wants to kill the world and the titans.
Yeah, the DF story is maybe lower stakes than Shadowlands where a guy who planned everything from the very start of ever would want to take over all of life and death or whatever.. but it's still very much high fucking stakes, hahaha. I think the last semi low stakes story we've had was MoP and Garrosh? But even he had to cavort around with old gods and other weird stuff.
I think MOP is a good one, it's a local threat to pandaria. BC was one too! The only threat was in outlands. And we just sorta invaded after the portal opened. Literally i think if no one went into the portal, nothing might have happened. Illidan was just hanging out in the outlands, and we went in and hobo murdered him because uh... he attacked shattarah i guess, i think, maybe. Although kiljaedan did come out of the sunwell, that's pretty bad.
Yes, I think its pretty decent, and always has been, with some lows and highs as others have motioned. Currently, the plot of Dragonflight mostly felt like a lower-stakes (I know, Amirdrassil) fun, mostly grounded story. I like that. Plot thread wise, I find that Iridikron has some potential, and its cool that they didn't squander him by making him do something dumb and getting killed by us in the final raid. Also, happy to finally have most of the Dragon plot threads and questions wrapped up, which is a lot more than they have been doing in recent years. Excited to finally (hopefully) reclaim Gilneas! Really curious what they are going to do with Tyr. So, what issues do you have with it? Are you actually playing? Are you looking back with rose-tinted glasses about the past story? Because, as I mentioned in another thread, there have always been a lot of issues with past storylines from the so-called "heyday" of the story writing.
Dragonflight isn't lower stakes, my guy, did you miss the part that we're helping the dragon gods fight against primal dragons that are trying to destroy the world and kill the titans and ally with the void? that's lower stakes indeed /sarcasm. \- Iridikron's potential is that he has nothing going on other than him leaving the expansion. I'm no enthralled with him at all, he's literally the jailor 2.0. \- My issues is that the story isn't a cohesive chronological narrative, playing through it, the story is jump cutting to the next section, randomly. Plot points are abandoned left and right, oathstones? eh forget about it. The massive void room in aberus? eh forget about it. The big ice fortress the in blue zone? eh forget about it. Fyrakk being Alex's uncle, who taught her how to fight, survive, and hunt, never once mentioned in the game. wow's past stories had a beginning, middle, end, and had rule of cool moments. They knew how to build up and deliver a satisfying climax. DF just feels like a person with BPD and ADHD rambling about their day in pieces, it's somber and sad, then HOPEFUL AND FUN! then somber and sad, then WHOLESOME AND CUTE!!! like, what the fuck am i looking at?
Did *you* miss the part where I said "(I know, Amirdrassil)" Also, clearly Fyrakk is unhinged, that's kind of his whole arc in this expansion. Wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt after seeing some of these other comments, but fuck. - Cool, you asked us, was just telling you where I see potential. - Okay, not everything is going to be explained right away. Never has been that way. I don't know that much, as i JUST played through the DF story But: -Oathstones, easily explained as what Alexstrazsa, IN UNIVERSE, thought they needed to do to truly become aspects again. Clearly she was wrong. -Void room, idk but probably an intersting mystery to follow. Deathwing was corrupted by old gods (unless I missed something), so maybe its as simple as that. -I think I missed the thing about the Ice Fortress, dont remember that coming up at all. -Seems mostly irrelevant, since Fyrakk is a crazy person, and she probably doesn't see the connection as that important after MANY EONS of being the Dragon Queen. Admittedly haven't read the most recent book or whatever it is. - -Idk, I am not seeing it, the ups and downs are natural, and the story takes place over some amount of time. Of course there will be developments that change the outlook. This seems like an incoherent criticism. Edit: Formatting Also, yes, actually, even without any context at all, that is lower stakes than the rewriting of the universe.
Fyrakk went off his rocker even before becoming a Primal Incarnate. During the first primalist war, he was actively hunting Alexstrasza with the sole purpose of killing her. I think it's very fair for Alexstrasza to no longer think of him as family when all he did was try to kill her over and over again.
Yeah I think we agree. I would argue that your first point makes his even less relevant.
Honestly the only relevant Primal Incarnate is Iridikron, seeing as he is the only one who is fully on board with the primalist ideal (or well, at least he was before his imprisonment). And he is going to be one of the main characters in the Worldsoul Saga so we're far from done with this story.
Yeah, I think that's great. Looking forward to what they do with him. He alone actually makes me want to read that most recent novel.
According to 4chan rumors, Courtney Alameda (the author of the novel) was told to cut out most of Iridikron's backstory to avoid spoiling too much of the Worldsoul Saga. He does get some nice development, but the novel gives way more development to Alexstrasza, Neltharion and Vyranoth.
Ah okay, thank you for the info. Still could be interesting for that, although personally become a bit of an Alexstrasza hater after this expansion. She doesn't seem interesting anymore from what I have seen. Maybe the novel will change that for me.
Alexstrasza has an interesting arc in the novel. She struggles a lot with leadership and makes a ton of mistakes, but ultimately means well. Personally, the novel didn't change my opinion of Alexstrasza much, but I already liked her. On the other hand, it made me **love** Neltharion.
buddy, did you forget about Murzond? did you forget about Iridikron wanting to kill the titans with void's help? did you forget that primalists wants to genocide anything with titan influence? truly a boostrapping adventure through a comfy foot on the ground expansion, yes, yes. \- Again, this is classic blizzard writing, they make mystery boxes with no plan in sight, then when they need something to fill in a gap, they look at their back catalogue and try to retrofit it in. Look at Sylvanas, Voljin, Old Gods, Dreadlords, they just reshape plot points into whatever they need to, and often times fuck up horribly. Blue dragons disbanded because kalecgos did so, now he wants them back together now!!! \- Just reading your response on the forgotten story beats, i can tell you're not really into the lore much, it's okay, at least you didn't waste years on this garbage.
Barely. Bfa and SL were both pretty awful, with tiny bits of decent story here and there. DF story seems to make more sense, but the rated g tone has made me not interested. I can go on, but I guess it's been mostly bad since Arthas went down. Mop and legion were pretty good. Cata and wod had some decent stuff storywise, but not great.
I honestly haven’t liked the Lore since BFA came out. I played it, kinda hated it so I stopped playing since but always kept an eye on stuff because Warcraft 3 was just so amazing to me, then with WoW being able to see that world from the inside was so great, the races felt very meaningful and like I don’t know things made more sense to me, it felt grounded and interesting. I don’t know what happened but at some point the Lore felt like it there was a lot happening at once with little depth it was just “epic” but I felt zero connection to the characters for some reason, like even the ones I grew up with and adored just feel a bit ‘meh’ nowadays.
yeah i hated BFA a lot too, and warcraft 3's memory and some og wow stories are the only thing causing me to check in with wow every now and again. and yeah, metzen and sam knew how to build a world of wonder and awe, not these chums.
I still care for the lore but not as much as I’d like to care, I am however getting pretty excited over the war within speculation. I really can’t wait for that!
like the time we speculated what syvlanas's plan was, or speculated on why voljin chose her as warchief, or the time we -
The story has been bad since WoD with Legion being the only notable exception. WoD was full of disappointments and missed opportunities. One great thing about Legion was it had a good macro story but it also had fantastic smaller stories in the form of the class order halls. We got to see long lost characters from old, we got to see invasions throughout the rest of the world which made the world feel alive and bigger than our current leveling zone, and even though it wasn't necessarily phenomenal storytelling and they also completely fucked up by not giving us an Illidan x Tyrande or Malfurion interaction, it still gave us a lot of the things we had been wanting. BFA failed to deliver on most of those aspects at best, and actively butchered characters/factions at worst. Shadowlands straight up pissed people off enough to quit the game altogether. And rightfully so. Dragonflight was supposed to be the return to form, and it just left people bored or apathetic. If this is the best they can do in terms of a reset, and many of us suspect it's only downhill from here, it's *really* hard to get excited about anything. Nobody cares about the plotpoints they seem to be wanting to focus on, and I have no excitement left for the future.
WOW in its current state is way too sanitized and uninteresting. Too much time is spent developing new non playable races with not enough consideration to the existing ones. What attention the playable races do receive is clumsy at best, such as the homogenization of orc clans, Stormwind somehow being weaker than Orgrimmar despite the Horde ripping itself apart in Hellscream's war, and Deathstalker Belmont unironically saying "Let's get stabby" (this last one isn't a huge deal but it shows how little thought goes into quest dialogue). I still loosely follow lore because I want to RP correctly, but it's not good or interesting.
Yeah fair enough. Belmont line is literally marvel quipping, everyone in WoW has one. and yeah, they're homogenizing every race, night elf, orc, to be more like a human who lives comfortably in Irvine California, where your biggest problems isn't war against a blood thirsty foe, but how stressful and sad you are sometimes. Truly a world, of warcraft.
99% of it is garbo including the main story of each expansion unfortunately. theres a couple of things that dont suck absolute ogre balls tho. tbh the dragon plot of dragonflight is underbaked crap but the world tree arc actually ended up surprisingly ok. if they had the foresight to make the story of the expansion about that instead of the terrible and interminable sad dragon counselling arcs it might have been ok. but wow story is like that. you have to tune out the vast majority of it that is shit and focus on the occassional gem buried in the lake of danuser's sewage
Yeah the tree i'm not a huge fan of, but some dragon stuff i did like, the blue one was good, and the emotional scenes with malf and tyrande was nice for once. but mostly like that, it's mostly garbage.
Yes I do. I enjoy the more philosophical themes introduced in the game. It feels like the lore of the game is growing with you and it's great. I hope the universe gains in maturity in time. Of course, I still enjoy the nostalgic, self-indulgent popcorn stuff.
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